House calls: The case of the entertaining case

doi:10.1136/bmj.b5256

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ comment articles:

From

Limit by

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

Rhys H Thomas, specialty registrar and clinical research fellow12,
Naomi J P Thomas, specialty registrar3

¹Wales Epilepsy Unit, University of Wales, Heath Park, Cardiff CF14 4XW
²Wales Epilepsy Research Network, Institute of Life Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP
³Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil

Correspondence to: R H Thomas rhys-thomas{at}doctors.org.uk

Intrigued by a common assumption that neurological cases are over-represented in published case reports, Rhys Thomas and Naomi Thomas investigate whether this is true and explore possible reasons for it

Introduction

Neurophobia—the fear of neurology1—is well described in medical students and is postulated as the reason for an apparent bias favouring neurology in case studies. Neurological cases represent more than a quarter of all Lancet case reports: 29% of 523 cases during 1996-20022 and 26% of 360 cases during 2003-8.3 Coles et al attributed this to “the trepidation and interest that neurological syndromes generate among physicians.”2 They considered this stigmatisation of a core medical specialty to represent our continued inability to demystify the subject.

However, the literature does not tell us whether neurological cases are genuinely over-represented or merely appropriately common. We set out to determine this by comparing the pattern of cases from a UK publisher (BMJ Case Reports) with the UK burden of disability. We also hypothesise that a more eloquent explanation for …