How to write a case report

Background: Since before Hippocrates, case reports have provided a rich res ource for teaching and research in medicine. Case reports are published by many prominent journals-more than 140,000 case reports are indexed in MEDLI NE from 1996 to present-and a number of narrative guidelines for the prepar ation of case reports have appeared in the medical literature. To facilitat e the preparation of case reports, we reviewed the existing guidelines and a random sampling of published case reports and created a fill-in-the-blank s worksheet for physicians to use to capture unique scientific observations . Although originally developed to assist family practice residents to writ e case reports, the case report worksheet can be used by physicians in any practice setting and any discipline to collect and report interesting, unus ual, or newsworthy cases.