Protopapas and Athanasiou Journal of Medical Case Reports 2011, 5:164 http://www.jmedicalcasereports.com/content/5/1/164 Page 2 of 3 Multimedia Adverse Events Medical Case Reports (MCRs) Medical Innovation New Diseases or Exceptional Environments Figure 1 Evolving dimensions increasing the educational value of MCRs relevant reference of the protocol, should be included in the MCR. 4. Conclusion: The Conclusion section should com- prise a root cause analysis. MCRs of new diseases, rare conditions or exceptional environments Case reports remain an important source of evidence for rare conditions or exceptional treatment environments. Large trials are not possible in such cases, and MCRs offer important treatment information. Typical examples include the description of a new or previously unde- scribed genetic condition with an atypical inheritance pattern or the management circumstances of individual patients in the context of geographic or physiological extremes (including high altitude and major disasters). In the absence of larger data sets, these individual cases offer valuable information for healthcare practitioners in treating any similar patients when they occur. MCRs of innovation We feel that case reports describing innovative techni- ques advance healthcare and biotechnology by translat- ing, validating and finally returning data from individual patients for further development and refinement of technologies with a low cost-impact ratio. The major issue of biomedical innovation is patient safety, and this should be reflected in reporting a novel intervention. The relevant institutional, national and international guidelines should provide benchmarks for innovations and should be adopted in drafting the MCR manuscript. Appropriate use of media for MCRs: ethics, standardization and creativity The expanding role of multi-media in driving home a message from a case presentation and attracting reader- ship cannot be overemphasized. JMCR aspires to describe ethical, high-quality imaging modalities in MCRs. Ethics JMCR’s mandatory policy on consent to publish [9] applies especially to the explicit consent of the reported patients to have their images, X-rays and histological films published. It is also important to keep in mind that the author guidelines of JMCR state that authors must preserve the anonymity of the patient [4]. It is expected that all photographs of humans and reproductions of medical imaging (for example, computed tomographic