Author Guidelines

GUIDELINES FOR WRITING CASE REPORTS IN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE & SURGERY CASE REPORT

Case reports are a common type of medical publication. In surgery, they describe a patient's surgical condition and treatment. These reports are used for education and research. They can help identify new or unusual diseases, evaluate the effectiveness of medical interventions, and teach medical students. All scientific writing, including case reports, case series, and review articles, must follow specific guidelines. Case reports in surgery, or any other medical field, should adhere to the CARE guidelines.

What are The CARE guidlines?
CARE stands for Case Reports. These are guidelines created by a group of experts to help ensure that case reports are useful, transparent, and accurate. These guidelines were first developed in 2011-2012, and presented in 2013 2013 at the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication and were quickly adopted by many medical journals. They have been translated into nine languages. The CARE guidelines aim to improve the quality of medical research reporting. This supports the goals of the Equator Network, which is an organization dedicated to improving the reliability and value of medical research.

Why CARE guidelines?
Accurate and transparent data collection from medical cases helps to provide high-quality personalized healthcare in the future. The CARE guidelines for case reports help authors make their reports more transparent, reduce bias, and provide information about what treatments work, for whom, and under what conditions. These guidelines can be used for case reports in surgery and other medical fields.
Clear and concise case reports that follow the CARE guidelines can reveal potential advantages, disadvantages, and resource implications of medical treatments. They also provide guidance for clinical practice and research and contribute to improved medical education.
Case reports in surgery that follow the CARE guidelines can help evaluate patient outcomes, the effectiveness of clinical practice guidelines, and the return on investment for medical treatments. These case reports can benefit various healthcare stakeholders, including:

• Patients: By providing information to compare different treatment options.
• Educators: By supporting case-based learning.
• Researchers: By helping to develop testable hypotheses from real-world clinical settings.
• Authors: By making it easier to write systematic, accurate, and transparent case reports.
• Medical journals: By providing guidance for author guidelines and peer review of Journal of Medicine & Surgery Case Report.

How to write a case report following the CARE guidelines?

1. An Overview
   To write a case report for publication in a journal like the Journal of Medicine & Surgery Case Report, start by selecting a unique case that hasn’t been published before. Identify the key message you want to convey, such as a diagnostic evaluation, a treatment outcome, a rare disease, or a new perspective on a case.
   Gather the necessary information to create a detailed timeline and narrative of the case. Before writing the narrative, summarize the key events in a timeline. Then, complete the rest of the case report by including specific details, scientific explanations, and references. Whenever possible, support your findings with evidence from existing research. Finally, write an abstract for your case report.
   Before you start writing, obtain the patient’s informed consent and ensure that their personal information is kept confidential.
   
   
2. Case report writing sequence
   Scientific writing isn’t hard if you know the writing sequence. Here is info on how to write a surgical case report with the right sequence
   1. Section 1- Working Title, the Event: Timeline and Narrative
   - Title: To write a surgical case report, start with a clear and concise title that highlights the most important aspect of the case. This could be a symptom, a diagnostic test, a treatment, or the outcome. The primary focus should be succeed by the words “case report”.
   - Patient information: Gather the clinical information of the patient’s visits. De-identify his/her information. Pen down the patient’s primary medical conditions and major clinical findings; and his or her family, medical, and psychological history.
   - Timeline: Create a timeline to record what exactly happened along with the summary of episodes of medical care provided.
   - Event: Narrate the episode of care. Include figures and tables wherever required.
   - Complaints: The principal complaints and associated demographic details.
   - Clinical findings: Describe the concerned past medical history, suitable co-morbidities, and vital findings from physical examination (PE).
   - Diagnostic evaluations: Talk about diagnostic testing methods and results. Include the differential diagnosis, diagnostic challenges, diagnosis, and prognostic characteristics, when applicable.
   - Therapeutic interventions: Recount the intervention types (such as lifestyle, preventive, surgical, and pharmacologic); the administration of interventions (dosage, strength, frequency, and duration); and the modifications in therapeutic interventions, if any, along with explanations. You may include figures and tables to enhance clarity.
   - Investigation and results: Relate the clinical course of the care episodes during re-examination visits. Discuss the intervention discontinuation, interruption, or modification; intervention observance and tolerability and how it was evaluated; and unexpected events or adverse impacts.
   
   2. Section 2- The Why’s: Introduction, Discussion, Conclusion
   Here are CARE case report guidelines concerning the descriptions and discussions to be done in various sections of your surgery case reports.
   - Introduction: The introduction should shortly sum up why the case report is important and specify the most recent CARE article.
   - Rationale: Discuss why it might have happened. Establish your case argument by providing scientific references for its strengths and constraints (i.e. a comprehensive literature review is required).
   - Conclusion: The conclusion (usually written in one paragraph) should contain the main findings of the case without any references. In other words, it should contain the most important findings of the case report.
   
   3. Section 3- Abstract, Keywords, References, Acknowledgements, and Informed Consent
   So, here is what you need to write when it comes to particulars relating to abstract, keywords, references, acknowledgements, and informed consent.
   - Abstract: Write the abstract after you finish the case report. It can be structured (in the format: Introduction, Case Report, and Conclusion) or unstructured. Briefly summarize the key points of the case, including background information, main findings, and important lessons learned. Avoid using citations in the abstract.
   - Keywords: Give 2 to 5 keywords that will recognize the vital concepts covered by the case report.
   - References: This section should include the appropriate references to your case report from scientific literature. References should be written in Vancouver style and numbered consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the text and  in the same numerical order in the References section.
   - Acknowledgements: In this section, include a concise acknowledgement of funding support or conflicts of interest, if applicable
   - Informed consent and Patient perspective: Authors must obtain patient consent (including a patient perspective). We recommend obtaining patient consent and perspective before beginning to write your case report.The journal also requires a declaration that the author(s) have obtained written and signed consent to publish the case report from the patient or legal guardian(s).
   
   
3. CARE checklist case report.
   Once you complete writing your case report, ensure that you have included the following in your case report.Title

• • Keywords
  • Introduction
  • Patient Information
  • Clinical findings
  • Timeline
  • Diagnostic assessment
  • Therapeutic intervention
  • Follow-up and outcomes
  • Discussion
  • Patient perspective
  • Informed Consent
    

What are the other particulars related to case report writing?
While following the CARE guidelines for writing a case report, you also need to take into account the particulars specified by the journal to which you are submitting your manuscript. For instance, when you submit it to Journal of Medicine and Surgery Case Report, the following instructions should be adhered to.

• No. of authors: There should be no more than 6 authors.
• Word count of the abstract: The abstract should be less than 250 words, no matter whether it is structured or unstructured.
• No. of keywords: 3 to 5
• Word limit: A maximum of 4000 words
• No. of figures: A maximum of 10
• No. of tables: A maximum of 5
• No. of references: A maximum of 30.

When writing a case report for the Journal of Medicine and Surgery Case Report, be sure to follow the guidelines provided. This will help you create a high-quality case report that is accurate, transparent, unbiased, and well-written.