Guidelines for submission of case reports

In order to be introduced in the database the case reports will be processed in a unique format, based on a pattern. The case report will be readable in a "known" or "unknown" format. In the first instance the presentation follows the typical format of a case report. In the "unknown" format the reader will be asked to answer a series of questions referring to diagnosis, examinations, therapy etc. If you are not acquainted with computer document processing skip the following paragraphs. Send your case report to the Project Secretary by post, fax or e-mail (Title, Authors, Key words, Summary, Learning objectives, History, Physical examination,..., Discussion - see the "known" format; References; Figures, Tables etc.; Legend for figures. Pictures may be scanned / photographed by the authors or may be sent for processing to the project secretarial office. After computer processing the case report will be sent back to the authors on diskette for being approved for publication. The case report on the diskette is the author.s property and may be read on other computers or presented in video communications. If you wish, you may also have your case report reviewed by a colleague you trust. In this case please give their names in order to be included in the case report summary. The documents submitted are not peer reviewed so the whole responsibility of the content belongs to the authors and reviewers. The pattern for the case report editing may be downloaded from the Med-Online site or may be obtained by e-mail or on diskette from the Project Secretary. The pattern is named "eng-diskk" and is archived. You may open it by using any of the standard archiving software (WinAce, WinRar, WinZip, etc..). If you do not have such software installed on your computer, you may download it free from the Internet (WinZip) or request it from the Project Secretary. The pattern needs to be edited in HTML using Netscape Composer, the HTML editor of the Netscape browser. Netscape 6.2 (although older versions such as 4.5 or 4.7 are just as good for this purpose) may be downloaded from the Internet (Netscape) or obtained form the Project Secretary. The following will describe in detail the necessary steps for editing the clinical case: Make sure you have already got installed, by download or from the Project Secretary the pattern for the case presentation as well as an archiving kit and the Netscape browser. Open the archived "eng-diskk" directory with one of the archiving software and save it in full on your hard disk with a given name (possibly the case title). Open the Netscape Composer (the Netscape HTML editor) from the Tasks bar of the Netscape browser in order to work on your data. Open the previously saved directory where you will find two other directories cases and img. Open the cases directory and from it the directory named 0000k, where you will find the directory fig, a word document named leg and a number of html files. Open the index.html file with the Netscape Composer. In this open document you will see a gray column on the left with the pages of the case and at the top of the page an orange bar with the title and authors of the case. Beneath the bar you will find the space for introducing your data (History, Physical examination, Diagnosis, Treatment etc.). First you must edit the orange bar with the case title and the authors. The identification number (0000) for the case will be given to you by the Project Secretary. The same information will be introduced on the next pages by the Copy/Paste commands. Please edit all the pages in the same way, A,B,. After each page click Save in order to make sure your changes are not lost. If you wish to include images, graphs, tables etc. you must indicate the place in the text where they should be inserted. Every image or figure must be named with a code formed of three parts: a number (0000, case number), a letter from A to W (indicating the different pages of the case, e.g. K . X-ray examinations or O . pathological examination), a number for the figures included in the respective page 01, 02,... 13 etc. Thus the code of the first image on the page of X-ray examinations of the case number 0011 will be 0011-K-01. Code-named as instructed above, all the images, graphs, figures will be saved in the fig directory of the case. The legend will be edited in a separate document, saved in the leg file of the case. The recommended image format is .jpeg or .gif, with a maximum width of 600px and maximum length of 800px with a resolution higher than 72 dpi. The image may be edited with arrows or pointers using any image editor. The meaning of these pointers will be included in the legend. The "unknown" case format will be edited by the project secretary based on the information filled in the "known" pattern. If you wish, you can do it by yourself, on the pattern obtained by download or from the Project Secretary. In the "unknown" pattern the left column includes the pages marked with different colours, light gray, dark gray or orange. Light gray is for case data (Copy/Paste them from your "known" pattern). Dark gray is for questions pages (which need no editing) and orange for the links to the answers pages, marked with yellow (Copy/Paste them from the "known" pattern). Archive the documents of your case report and send the archived file by e-mail or post the diskette/CD to the Project Secretary submitting for publication on Med-online. If you wish you may ask one or more colleagues to review your case report. If you do so, please mention their names in order to be included in the case summary. The documents submitted are not peer reviewed so the whole responsibility of the content belongs to the authors and the reviewers they have chosen.