The quality of clinical descriptions and definitive factors in dermatological case reports

Introduction and Purpose: Case reports still continue to exist as an important part of medical publications. In addition to the importance of it while passing on knowledge and experience in medical education, it has also great value because it pioneering new clinical research. Dermatology is a discipline in which visuality is at the forefront, therefore, good clinical descriptions are indispensable for an effective dermatological case report. In this study, dermatological case reports were examined, it is aimed to investigate how detailed the clinical descriptions made in the case reports, in other words, how high qualifies they were, and to determine the factors affecting the quality of clinical descriptions. Thus, it is aimed to contribute to the improvement of the quality of dermatological case reports. Materials and Methods: "The Journal of Dermatological Case Reports", a journal that publishes mostly dermatological case reports, was selected to provide data for the study. 247 articles of this journal published in 2007-2017 were reviewed, and 205 case reports containing dermatological descriptions were included in the study. eleven main features were investigated in clinical descriptions: location, side, quantity, distribution, size, shape, margin, color, touch, subjective symptom, and elementary lesion. The eight of these eleven main features were determined to be essential: location, quantity, size, shape, color, touch, symptom, and elementary lesion. In order to determine the significant factors affecting the quality of the description, the maximum number of mandatory features mentioned in the descriptions of each case report was used as the dependent variable and called the "quality score". Statistical evaluations were made by linear regression analysis. Results: The main findings in our study; are that the information about palpation and symptoms in clinical descriptions was mostly insufficient, detailed location information was not given for lesions outside the head and neck region, although the average number of authors was quite high, this did not have a positive effect on the quality score. The parameters that had a positive effect on the quality score were the presence of a dermatologist among the authors and specifying the presence or absence of clinical symptoms. Conclusion: For an effective dermatological case report, a detailed clinical description should be made. In order to make a detailed and high quality clinical description, a dermatologist should be among the authors or help from dermatologists should be sought. Also , it is concluded that it is presence of patients symptoms should be questioned and stated. Keywords: Case Reports, Descriptions