Instructions to authors for case reporting are limited: A review of a core journal list

We surveyed the current advice available to authors of case reports from 'instructions to authors' pages of a core collection of 249 journals ('Hague' list). These were examined and compared for advice or recommendation on writing case reports. Of these, 163 (65%) published case reports and provided instructions on this publication type. Data were extracted on items of style and content of case reports, using a piloted data extraction form.Journals that published case reports were grouped into medical (n = 81, 50%), surgical (n = 38, 23%) and generic or multidisciplinary (n = 44, 27%) categories. There was a difference among the medical, surgical and generic or multidisciplinary journals in the maximum number of words and pages allowed but no difference in the number of figures, tables, references, authors, abstract or synopsis, indexing or key words and consent. Additionally, there was no statistically significant difference among the three different categories of journals regarding the content of the case reports.Of the journals reviewed, we found that 'instructions to authors' pages provided limited and varied information for preparing a case report. There is a need for consensus, and more consistent guidance for authors of case report.Case reports are frequently published in the health care literature – more than 240,000 case reports appeared in MEDLINE in the last 5 years (1997 to 2002). Advice about preparing such reports in the "instructions to authors" pages of journals that publish case reports is alleged to be limited [1]. However, to our knowledge, this has not been formally evaluated.The roles of case reports are reported to be diverse. These include recognition and description of new diseases, detection of drug side effects (adverse or beneficial), study of the mechanism of disease, recognition of rare manifestation of disease, and medical education [2]. As some roles may be more suited to certain clinical specialities, one might expect "information for