We are pleased to announce that Clinical Case Reports has now launched with the publication of its inaugural issue. Clinical Case Reports is a new open access peer reviewed journal publishing case reports and clinical images across all Health Science disciplines.

Editor-in-Chief, Debra Jackson has highlighted two case reports from the issue:

Multiple bone metastases detected 10 years after mastectomy with silicone reconstruction for DCIS and contralateral augmentation by Ryutaro Mori and Yasuko Nagao
Summary: Multiple bone metastases were detected after treatment for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Contralateral invasive breast cancer was considered to be the metastatic origin.

A perioperative uncontrollable bleeding in an elderly patient with acquired hemophilia A: a case report by Andrea Cortegiani, Vincenzo Russotto, Grazia Foresta, Francesca Montalto, Maria Teresa Strano, Santi Maurizio Raineri and Antonino Giarratano
Summary: A perioperative uncontrollable bleeding referable to an acquired hemophilia A, characterized by a high factor VIII inhibitors titer and a very poor response to bypassing agents and immunosuppressive therapy.

In addition to case reports, the journal also publishes clinical images that illustrate a key clinical finding that can be presented in the form of a question. Below is the highlighted image from the first issue:

What is the diagnosis for this rash? by Namrata Singh and Shireesh Saurabh
Summary: A 46-year-old female with history of Churg-Strauss syndrome was seen for a flare-up.
The rash that she presented with was because of traditional practice called “coining” and this can be confused with physical abuse especially in children and a careful history is needed.

Our aim is to directly improve global health outcomes and share clinical knowledge using case reports to convey important best practice messages. The journal publishes common as well as uncommon clinical scenarios with a particular focus on those reports which illustrate the clinical use of important guidelines and systematic reviews.

We would like to invite you to publish your case report with us.

We are delighted to announce that Clinical Case Reports has appointed a new Editor-in-Chief, Professor Debra Jackson, who has been an academic nurse for over 15 years. She has a strong international profile and her experience and expertise includes leading two impressive research programs in women’s and family health and workforce development and adversity. Much of her research has been funded by national competitive grants. Professor Jackson has published widely, and has over 250 publications including journal articles, books and book chapters.  She is Editor of the Journal of Clinical Nursing, Managing Editor of Advances in Contemporary Nursing, and Editorial Board member and peer reviewer for Australian and international journals and funding bodies.

Professor Jackson has a strong vision for the newly launched journal:

“Clinical Case Reports is a unique journal that aims to contribute to quality patient care and health professional education through the dissemination of clinical practice scenarios. We focus on common and unusual clinical situations, and encourage critical reflection and critique of practice, and have a particular interest in reports that draw on the use of clinical guidelines. We want to support clinicians in providing patients with the best possible care, and ultimately we aim to provide a reservoir of case reports that can also be used in teaching and for secondary research purposes”.

The journal will shortly be publishing its first articles. Ensure you don’t miss them by signing up to receive email content alerts here>

Submit your case report to Clinical Case Reports here >

Case reports are important. Although much maligned over the last decade or so, case reports are now more widely recognised for their significant potential benefits: brilliant vehicles for delivering concise clinical-guidance messages to promote best practice; excellent teaching aids in case-based learning; the foundation for subsequent larger research programs; and a very useful training in the art of how to publish pretty-much anything at all.

However these benefits rely on two key challenges; being able to write the report in a clear and engaging way, and then being able to persuade someone else to publish it. I’ll write a few notes below on my views on report-writing, and then in the next blog in this series I’ll touch on publishing tips and strategies.  

As the editor of a new case report journal, Clinical Case Reports, one of the bits of my editor-role I enjoy most is helping authors write and shape their case reports to really drive home their message effectively. My view is that a brilliant report has to be clear, concise and relevant to its audience – like a clinician to clinician telephone referral. The crucial issue about the report’s message, is that it must have one! I read so many case reports which are interesting descriptions, but as the reader I am left thinking… “Yeah, but so what??”. Every case report must set out to tell the readers something they really need to know. This message needs very high external validity – it needs to be practical (people can do ‘it’ if they want to), important (people will see the need to do ‘it’), and generalisable (‘it’ not relating exclusively to only 1 small child in the whole world who has now got better anyway!). And in this last point, I think and hope we are seeing an important evolution in case reports that could have a profound impact on their relevance to clinical medicine. In the past case reports typically had humorous (which was bad), or pseudo-humorous (even worse), titles typically describing a really really rare thing. The rarer the better. Think “The dangers of goat soup”, or the “Rare chance association of Osgood Schlatters disease and pre-tibial tuberculosis in an elderly lady football player.” Two problems here: however hard you try the title will never really be funny; and if the case is truly that rare, why does anyone else need to read about it?

My view is that generalisability is key. The reports which authors should be writing describe important clinical situations which are common, but still cause management problems. Because they are common their message will be relevant to many more clinicians than the once-in-a-lifetime reports, and their important message will make them valuable to read and understand. As we move into a clinical era where practice is increasingly influenced by guidelines and meta-data, if case reports can illustrate how the tricky bits of guidelines or systematic review recommendations can be done in those common situations, then that’s even better still!

3 top tips when writing a case report:

1. Keep an eye out for challenging cases – they don’t have to be rare.
2. Select one which has an important message, ideally relevant to lots of other clinicians.
3. Write the report to focus on the message and present it like the best telephone referral you have ever made.

To see a recent webinar on “How to write Case Reports”, please view this recorded video at: http://bit.ly/videoCR

by Dr. Charles Young, Editor-in-Chief – Clinical Case Reports