International or national publication of case reports

Case reports are often regarded as second-class research, but are an important part of medical science as they often present first evidence of new discoveries. We here describe the type of case reports published in a Danish general medical journal.

We included all case reports published in Ugeskrift for Laeger in 2009. For each report, two authors extracted information on study characteristics and classified the relevance and the role of the report.

We included 139 case reports written in Danish. Thirty-nine (28%) were of general relevance and 100 (72%) of speciality relevance. The median number of authors was three (range: 1-7). The first author was a non-specialist physician in 119 (86%) of the reports and the last author a specialist in 103 (78%). A total of 124 (89%) reports had an educational role, six (4%) dealt with new diseases, two (1%) with new side effects, three (2%) with new mechanisms and four (3%) were curiosities. A total of 59 (42%) reports were surgical, 64 (46%) non-surgical and 16 (12%) paraclinical.

We found that most case reports published in Ugeskrift for Laeger were of speciality relevance and had an educational perspective. The journal may consider focusing on cases of more general educational relevance and should also consider whether the current form and language suit the aim and role of the various types of case reports.