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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Are we in need of a cases journal?



This is a call for cases to be submitted to this new journal. Not only the extraordinary exciting cases but all cases. The intention is to form a database with thousands of cases and a search function so that physicians as well as patients can look for e.g. male 52 years with COPD and non smoking. The focus is on outcome of these cases, that is what they want to know from the authors

Are we in need of this new journal? Don't think so.
Let me know in the comments



2 comments:

Aqua said...

I find this an interesting idea given that sometimes things work for an individual that may not show up as significantly working for the general population in a controlled study.

For eg. maybe a medication that doesn't help most people in a trial does help some people with TRD as an individual case. I guess I worry that trials often exclude people for many reason (so may not really represent the WHOLE poulation of people) and also trials are often very short(maybe too short to really tell the whole tell) and then there is the nagging question about WHO is funding the research and what results are they deciding to publish vs. all the results.

A journal or online resource that listed all the treatments and all the outcomes could be very interesting and helpful for some groups of people whose treatments are resistant or whose population is excluded from drug trials.

Dr. Shock said...

In cases it is always hard to tell whether it is the treatment or the course of the illness. I often meet colleagues who will try everything for very curious reasons. Mostly their experience with a certain drug, or based on erroneous assumptions, giving to much credit to hypotheses still to be confirmed. I often call them alchemists.
Miracles with drugs do happen and when they do usually it doesn't take much time for these new indications to be tested. As a matter of fact most drugs in psychiatry started that way.