Case Series and Case Reports

Case series and case reports consist either of collections of reports on the treatment of individual patients, or of reports on a single patient.

 For example: one of your patients has a condition that you have never seen or heard of before and you are uncertain what to do. A search for case series or case reports may reveal information that will assist in a diagnosis. However, for any reasonably well-known condition you should be able to get better evidence. Case series and case reports, since they use no control group with which to compare outcomes, have no statistical validity .