Case Reports: Can We Improve?

Maj John D. Childs

DOI: 10.2519/jospt.2004.0102

The purpose of this editorial is to offer several recommendations to improve the overall quality and usefulness of manuscripts submitted as case reports to the JOSPT and other peer-reviewed journals. Specifically, authors should distinguish how publication of their case report adds to the existing body of knowledge in the literature. They should incorporate reliable and valid health-related quality of life (HRQL) instruments specific to the patient's condition and representative of the patient's impairments and level of function/disability, where such instruments exist. Authors of case reports should resist the temptation to assume that what was done to the patient directly caused the observed outcome. And finally, and perhaps most important, authors should subject their case report to a substantive "in-house" peer review prior to submission.

J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2004;34(2):44-46. doi:10.2519/jospt.2004.0102

Key Words: case reports, peer review

 

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