title: [Structure of a medical article].
abstract: The publication of medical research results requires that articles are drafted with a current well-codified structure that must be respected to convince the editorial board of a review and then its readers. The title must be short and relevant in order to best reflect the contents of the article and to allow its effective search on the Internet. The universally adopted structure is the IMRAD (Introduction Methods, Results and Discussion). The introduction is a prerequisite; it presents current knowledge on the problem studied, justifies the subject of the work and specifies its objective within this context. The "Methods" section describes the population, the type of study and its methodology, the equipment used, the primary and secondary end-points studied as well as the statistical methods used for analysis. The "Results" section describes the raw results associated with the statistical tests illustrated by relevant tables and figures. The "Discussion" section is used to underline results that are considered to be important and to compare them with those already published in the field. It may also contain comments on potential bias and suggest the impact of the results on daily practice and/or future research. A conclusion may finalize the discussion or form the subject matter for an independent section. Lastly, all articles include a relevant summary and a suitable bibliography.
authors.affiliation: Service d'urologie, CHU La Milétrie, avenue Jacques-Coeur, 86000 Poitiers, France. j.irani@chu-poitiers.fr
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Irani
mesh_terms: D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D014956:Writing / Q000592:standards*