How much Literature Review is enough for a Case Report?

Literature review is an essential part of any scientific document. It's the foundation on which the premise of scientific research is built. Every scientific study has to be seen in context of the existing knowledge and literature. However literature is growing at exponential rate today and especially with so many online journals today it's really difficult to review all literature. This poses unique challenge to authors who wish to submit a case report for Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports. First issue is how much important is literature review for a case report. From early days of case reports, literature review is been the most important cornerstone of a case report. Especially since earlier only rare cases were considered as case reports [1]. So to establish the rarity of the case it was important to thoroughly review the literature. For us at Journal of Orthopaedic Case Report, literature review is one of the most significant part of the case report. Most of the times it is the section which decides on acceptance or rejection of borderline cases. For cases that are rare we recommend our authors to do a thorough review of literature and also prepare a table of literature review which should be added to the manuscript. For cases where is the focus is on a specific clinical learning point, the literature review needs to be more exhaustive. When a clinical point has to be made, the literature review should cover all the alternative plans that are already described in literature or at least similar cases that have used a different plan. Many cases that are published in Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports are more on clinical strategies that are improvised and applied to clinical cases. In these scenario we wish our authors to provide rationale for their choices with back up from literature. Also a thorough review of all exiting strategies should be added to the review. The intention is to make the reader aware of all existing management options and then understand why particular option was chosen in the particular patient. This will also help effective communication between the authors and reviewers and ultimately the readers. The second issue is how much literature to review. With so much literature available at times literature review may miss important article which is relevant to the case. At times it happens that too much literature is added to the article making …