Acknowledgments: If someone provided assistance with the preparation of the case study, thank them briefly. It is neither necessary nor conventional to thank the patient (although we appreciate what they have taught us). It would generally be regarded as excessive and inappropriate to thank others, such as teachers or colleagues who did not directly participate in preparation of the paper.

List every research article and textbook read and used in the preparation of the paper. These should be listed according to the style required by the journal. There are several styles in general use. We have illustrated the “Vancouver style” which is quite popular. In this style you number references in the order that you have used them in the paper. You will see that the Vancouver style tends to use less punctuation. This may seem rather cavalier based on what you learned in public school about punctuation, but it is efficient and easy to read. Only use references that you have read and understood and actually used to support the case study. Do not feel that you have to inflate the list of references. There is no rule about how many references you should use. Some very good papers use only a half dozen or so references, and considering that a case study is usually a fairly short paper, you would probably not want to use more that 20 references at most. Try to avoid using textbooks as references, since it is assumed that most readers would already have this information. Also, do not refer to personal communication, since readers have no way of checking this information.

A popular search engine for English-language references is Medline:

        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

Legends: If you used any table, figures or photographs, they should be accompanied by a succinct explanation.

Tables, figures and photographs should be included at the end of the manuscript. Tables and graphics should be clear and printed on white paper. Unless the journal gives other directions, they should be as large as possible (the journal may photograph and reduce them). Photographs are printed on glossy paper. All tables, figures and photographs should be lightly numbered on the back with a pencil, and an arrow should indicate the top of the figure.

Permissions: If any tables, figures or photographs, or substantial quotations, have been borrowed from other publications you must include a letter of permission from the publisher. Also, if you use any photographs which might identify a patient, you will need their written permission.