This document discusses the structure and purpose of a case report. It begins by defining a case report as a narrative in the professional literature that identifies a single patient incident and discusses relevant factors. It then provides examples of case reports and outlines the typical structure, which includes a title, abstract, introduction, case description, discussion, and conclusion. The case description section chronologically describes the patient's history, examinations, investigations, diagnoses, treatments, and outcome while preserving confidentiality. The discussion section justifies the case report's uniqueness and importance by summarizing and interpreting its key findings. Overall, case reports are useful for reporting rare diseases, associations, presentations and outcomes.

1. PRESENTED BY : MOMINA JAVED

2. Learning Objectives
• Determine what types of cases are worth reporting
• Understand how to structure a Case Report

3. Case Report
• “Scientific observations . . . That are carefully documented so that
they may be a valuable education and research resource.” (McCarthy
et al. 2000)
•A narrative in the professional literature that identifies a single
incident and discusses pertinet factors related to the patient.

4. Case reports Examples
• Charles Bonnet syndrome—elderly people and visual
hallucinations
(Anu Jacob, Sanjeev Prasad, Mike Boggild, Sanjeev Chandratre)
• Nutritional Amblyopia Combined with Night Blindness
(Angeline M. Nguyen Ashley A. Campbell Richard D. Semba)

5. Background
• Case report is like story telling in medicine
• Should be clear, short and useful for its purpose
• Is the written form of the verbal presentation of a case history

7. Reason for case report
• Usually Rare disease .
• Association of diseases.
• Rare presentations of more common diseases.
• Detection of adverse or beneficial side effects of drugs (and other
treatments) .
• Reporting a particular outcome of a case management.
• Mistakes, complications and lessons learned .

8. Essentials
• Anonymise the patient.
• Omit non-essential personal details.
• Table of results can be helpful.
• Photos of clinical signs and diagnostic studies are invaluable

9. Structure of a case report
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Case report/ Case note
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References

12. Structure of a case report
• Title :Should be brief and informative.
• Abstract: Short summary that gives an overall idea about the
content of the case report.
• Quite brief and generally shorter than that for other types of
articles, has a word limit of 100 words or less.

14. Structure of a case report
• Introduction: Should be concise and immediately attract the
attention and interest of the reader.
• Provide background information on why the case is worth reading
and publishing, and provides an explanation of the focus of the
case report.

16. The case description/Summary/Case
note
• The current medical condition and medical history, including relevant family history.
• It should be clearly described in chronological order:
 History
▪ Presenting features
▪ Past Medical History
▪ Social and Family History
▪ Drug History
 Physical Examination
 Investigations
 Differential Diagnosis
 Treatment
 Outcome

17. The case description/Summary/Case
note
• Patient confidentiality must be preserved.
• Patient demographics such as age and gender, and occasionally,
race and occupation are referred to in the first sentence.
• In order to reduce the possibility of identifying the patient, the
patient's initials, date of birth, and other identifiers such as
hospital number must not be used.

19. Discussion
• Most important section of the case report.
• It summarize and interpret the key findings of the case report, to
contrast the case report with what is already known in the
literature

23. Discussion
This section basically justify case report uniqueness!

27. Advantages
• Can help in the identification of new trends or diseases
• Can help detect new drug side effects and potential uses (adverse
or beneficial)
• Educational – a way of sharing lessons learned
• Identifies rare manifestations of a disease
• Case studies expose the participants to real life situations which
otherwise is difficult.

28. Disadvantages
• Cases may not be generalizable
• Not based on systematic studies
• Causes or associations may have other explanations
• Can be seen as emphasizing the bizarre or focusing on misleading
elements
• Involves selection bias
• It has not any control arm

29. Exercise
1. __________ usually describe an unusual or novel occurrence of a disease.
a) Case series
b) Case report
c) Cohort
d) Case control
2. Case reports are actually ___________ studies.
a) Descriptive
b) Clinical
c) Experimental
d) None of above

30. Answer
1.b
2.a

31. 3. Case series involves set of patients with a clinical issue while case report also involves:
a) Set of patients with unusual condition
b) A single patient with unusual condition
c) A single patient with communicable disease
d) All of above
4. Which bias is associated with case report?
a) Information
b) Recall
c) Random
d) Selection

32. Answer
3.b
4.d

33. A Case Report may be the beginning of a
glorious and successful career in medical
writing!