Editorial: Aggregating case reports: a way for the future of evidence-based health care?

Abstract

The role of case reports in increasing our understanding of health care is growing. To date, case reports have mainly been used as a singular entity: to describe individual cases or cases managed by an individual practitioner. The feature of these reports has also been quite singular: usually to either identify a unique symptom, presentation, or adverse event. At 'Clinical Case Reports', we also have an interest in emphasizing best practice in addressing frequently occurring clinical events, and particularly drawing attention to the clinical use of published systematic reviews or clinical guidelines. Case reports have a unique value and represent an enormous potential reservoir of knowledge that is largely untapped at the present time. Case reports provide a detailed and contextualized account of an event or illness trajectory that captures events including the presentation, diagnostic dilemma, diagnosis, initial treatment and treatment over time, and rationale for and response to any changes to treatment. Case reports capture the detailed nuance of the trajectory of an illness, that can include a single presentation event or an event with multiple and repeated presentations. Furthermore, the existence of comorbid conditions and how they interplay with the presenting problem (or evolution of a problem) can be teased out and made visible in ways that others can learn from. The initial encounter or reason for presentation may not have been as neat as a single presenting problem. As text, case reports are constructed in retrospect and so the detailed events of an illness or event can be reconstructed.