New Reporting Guidelines For Case Reports Presented At The Congress On Peer Review And Biomedical Publication And Published In Seven Medical Journals

PORTLAND, Oregon, Sept. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- David Riley, MD, Editor in Chief of Global Advances in Health and Medicine, presented the CARE (CAse REport) guidelines at the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication in Chicago, sponsored by the BMJ and JAMA, today. These guidelines are also being simultaneously published in seven medical journals. The CARE guidelines, in development since 2011, improve the transparency and accuracy of published case reports and offers the possibility that clinical practice and research receive early signals of effectiveness, adverse events, and costs. The guidelines are available at www.CARE-statement.org.

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Historically, case reports have been written without the benefit of standardized reporting guidelines. They are often inconsistent and insufficiently rigorous. Guidelines improve the accuracy and transparency of written case reports, providing information from the "real world" practice of healthcare delivery. In the past year alone, more than 66,000 case reports were published in journals indexed by the US National Library of Medicine and 27,000 case reports are searchable in the Cases Database from Biomed Central. In medical journals, dominated by clinical trials and systematic reviews, case reports provide important information about the care of individual patients.

Currently, patients have tools to manage their personal health records and investigate potential treatment options. Practitioners and patients alike are now able to push and aggregate information from patient encounters and health histories into consolidated profiles. Case reports are medical narratives that offer a framework for the early evaluation of signals of effectiveness, adverse events, and cost.

"Systematically written case reports contain information that improves the practice of evidence-based medicine—when care improves, patients are better served," according to Dr Riley.

Contact: Donna Baca
Phone: +1-981-205-7515
Email: dbaca@gahmllc.com