Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
13-4
The case is usually presented in chronological order. It is important to keep the time frame clear for readers, especially if the case starts with referral to our institution and then requires a jump back in time to events that happened earlier. If the patient was treated at multiple institutions, you should make clear what was done at our institution. The best sequence in which to present the details of the case will of course depend on the particular case, but a common order for a case report is:
1. Presenting signs, symptoms, and complaints;
2. Relevant medical history and relevant family medical history;
3. Other personal history relevant to the case (for example, tobacco use in a patient with lung cancer);
4. Medications being used;
5. Relevant results of physical examinations, laboratory tests (include normal range for unusual tests), and radiologic imaging; 6. Differential diagnosis and preliminary diagnosis if different from final diagnosis (and any tests and treatments resulting from the preliminary diagnosis);
7. Final diagnosis (and how it was determined);
8. Treatments;
9. Outcome;
10. Follow-up to present.
If the case requires reporting many data, a table may be an efficient way to present those data.
Cases that focus on histopathologic findings, results of specialized laboratory studies, and/or genetic findings may need separate sections for those findings (such sections typically appear after the Case Description section or as subsections of the Case Description section) or even separate Methods and Results sections if the tests are unusual or uncommon.
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