Abstract
Background
A case report is a narrative that describes, for medical, scientific, or educational
purposes, a medical problem experienced by one or more patients. Case reports written
without guidance from reporting standards are insufficiently rigorous to guide clinical
practice or to inform clinical study design.
Primary Objective
Develop, disseminate, and implement systematic reporting guidelines for case reports.
Methods
We used a three-phase consensus process consisting of (1) pre-meeting literature review
and interviews to generate items for the reporting guidelines, (2) a face-to-face
consensus meeting to draft the reporting guidelines, and (3) post-meeting feedback,
review, and pilot testing, followed by finalization of the case report guidelines.
Results
This consensus process involved 27 participants and resulted in a 13-item checklist—a
reporting guideline for case reports. The primary items of the checklist are title,
key words, abstract, introduction, patient information, clinical findings, timeline,
diagnostic assessment, therapeutic interventions, follow-up and outcomes, discussion,
patient perspective, and informed consent.
Conclusions
We believe the implementation of the CARE (CAse REport) guidelines by medical journals
will improve the completeness and transparency of published case reports and that
the systematic aggregation of information from case reports will inform clinical study
design, provide early signals of effectiveness and harms, and improve healthcare delivery.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 16, 2013
Accepted:
August 2,
2013
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Reproduced with permission of Global Advances in Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
