Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles

This page proposes style guidelines for editing medical articles. Of course, the general rules from the Wikipedia:Manual of Style also apply when writing medical articles.

To briefly summarise, here is a top ten of tips that may help to write good medical articles. Further discussion is provided below.

1. Avoid medical jargon, use plain English instead.
2. Avoid writing from the doctor's point of view, instead use a Neutral Point of View.
3. Use scientific names for disease articles.
4. Think twice before using eponyms.
5. Don't use disclaimers. The Medical disclaimer is part of the General disclaimer, and there is a policy against disclaimer templates.
6. Infoboxes are a nice way of summarising critical info.
7. Use appropriate sections in a standard order as described below.
8. There are good reference systems and templates for some good online resources like PubMed which may come in handy.
9. At the end, start looking for the appropriate category.
10. Be bold and have fun!

General pointers

• Avoid medical jargon or writing from a doctor's point of view. This is very difficult for many doctor or med student Wikipedians.
  • Explain all unavoidable medical terms the first time they occur.
  • If the concepts required to understand the term are lengthy and only peripherally related to the subject you're working on, linking to another article that explains the term in depth is a good idea.
  • For terms related to anatomical position, you can link to Anatomical terms of location, e.g. [[Anatomical terms of location|lateral]].
  • If necessary, you can link to the wiktionary, like this: [[wiktionary:Arachibutyrophobia|arachibutyrophobia]].

• If the latest research findings arrived in your post-box today, great! But as you add them to an article make sure they are supported by background content. You might also want to consider waiting until other researchers have confirmed it, or it is integrated in review articles or medical books.

The naming issue

Most members of the project appear to be in favour of "scientific labeling" of medical articles, with redirects from layman terms (heart attack redirects to myocardial infarction, with appropriate explanations of the latter). As this seems to contradict Wikipedia's present policy, the issue has been raised in different fora, each time eliciting remarkably little response. It has now been mentioned on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Medicine, and a message on the Wikipedia:Village pump will follow (see Wikipedia:Village pump#The names of diseases: policy?).

General policy appears to be, after the village pump discussion, that medical articles ought to be named scientifically, with good redirects in place.

A second issue is the use of eponyms: this comment comes from the article List of eponymous diseases (arguments pro and contra can be read there also):

In 1974, the US National Institutes of Health held a conference where the naming of diseases and conditions was discussed. This was reported in The Lancet (1974;i:798) where the conclusion was that "The possessive form of an eponym should be discontinued, since the author neither had nor owned the disorder." Medical journals, dictionaries and style guides remain divided on this issue.

In general, try to use the most accepted term to name the article.

Disclaimers (not necessary)

There is discussion about whether disclaimers (e.g. Wikipedia does not give medical info, consult with a doctor,etc., for example this discussion) should be used in medical articles. Some people think they should be used. However, the general policy is to not use other disclaimers than the main disclaimer, which can be accessed from any page on Wikipedia.

The intro

A medical article should begin with an introduction which is short, snappy and interesting. Explain and define the condition in plain English. This is your brief chance to lure a reader into reading further. Include the most interesting bits from all the following sections, such as the main symptoms, main cause, treatment and impact on person's health and prognosis.

Infoboxes

Disease

A tutorial on how to use the infobox is available at Template:Infobox Disease.

Drugs

You can find it at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Drugs#Infobox.

Sections

Usage

For consistency, the top level headers should be limited to those specified below. The order below is recommended but in some cases it may be appropriate to present the sections in a different order (for example, if a disease is largely eradicated, then the history of the disease may be more important than the symptoms).

There are some basic headings that are essential to any medical condition article – these are indicated with a "*". The other headers may not apply to all articles. More flexibility can be used when using lower-level headings. Where a heading below has a choice (/), pick the most appropriate.

SECTIONS FOR MEDICAL ARTICLES

Section title	Comments	Examples
Classification	Describe the varieties of the condition, and explain how they are differentiated.
Symptoms and signs*	When possible, wikify the symptom/medical sign.
Causes	Etiology is not plain English! Items such as pathogens, genes, or environmental factors may be appropriate in this section.
Pathophysiology/Mechanism	The hard bit: discuss the main abnormalities. This section can (justifiably) escalate into technical terms.	...decreased FEV1 in COPD due to bronchial obstruction and/or decreased elasticity.
Diagnosis *	Tests commonly performed to establish a diagnosis. Also mention characteristic biopsy findings here.	C-reactive protein, X-rays...
Treatment/Management *	Discuss and link to the key drugs and drug categories, surgical treatments and other therapies. Acute and chronic aspects of the condition often require different treatments. If aggressive treatment is not always appropriate, consider including watchful waiting as an alternative. Long-term monitoring or frequent check-ups may be required.
Prognosis	What is the median survival, what complications can be expected? Be extremely careful when writing about prognosis. Reference every claim, and make sure you understand the data yourself before committing anything to paper. Include simple explanations of any limitations to the data	Median survival is 1 year, but some patients may survive up to 10 years.
Prevention/Screening	Most of us forget to talk about this enough.
Epidemiology	If not touched upon earlier in the article, mention incidence or prevalence, economic and societal impact, sex differences, age groups and other predisposing factors.
History	Often this is fascinating. Good resources are WhoNamedit.com for eponymous diseases (see below for template), and good review articles (e.g. NEJM or the clinical reviews in J Clin Invest). Did you know that Hippocrates was aware of the significance of clubbing?
Social Impact	Many conditions have a section discussing the impact on the person in society, legal issues, stigma, public heath concerns, etc.
Notable cases	This section should be absent in most articles, but when it does exist, discretion should be applied, especially for the living and the recently deceased. Sometimes, this list can expand beyond control and become bigger then the article itself, or it may be hard to acertain if some celebrities really have the condition. An option that might satisfy everyone is to create a separate list article and link it.
References*	see below.
See also	Links in this section should be used sparingly. If two topics are truly linked, it should be possible to define that relationship with a sentence in the main article, and provide the wikilink there.
External links	Links in this section should be used sparingly. If an external link is provided, it is better to tie that link to an assertion in the article, and then use the Reference section instead of the External links section. Significant international and (English-speaking) national organisations may be included here if they contain useful material to supplement the article. However, their number should be kept in check –Wikipedia is not a collection of links. This is an encyclopedia, not a promotional tool for charities however worthy, nor is it trying to be resource for those seeking help. Further guidance is available at Wikipedia:External links.

Quick list of sections

To quickly start an article with these sections, you can copy-paste them from this list:

==Classification==

==Symptoms and signs==

==Causes==

==Pathophysiology==

==Diagnosis==

==Treatment/Management==

==Prognosis==

==Prevention/Screening==

==Epidemiology==

==History==

==Social Impact==

==Notable cases==

==References==

==See also==

==External links==

References

General use

Further guidance is available at Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Footnotes.

Ideally every medical article should have a few historical references (e.g. first reported case, discovery of pathogenesis) and one or two recent systematic reviews in core journals. Textbooks are equally valid sources. In particularly hot topics, it may be tempting to add very recent studies on the latest developments; this may not always be the best idea - it may be enough to broadly signify a trend without endeavouring to keep the reference list completely up-to-date with the very latest studies.

Ideally any online reference will be to an open sites that do not restrict access to non-professionals or require a subscription.

For the cite:ref system: enclose the citation details within the <ref name="xxx"> ... </ref> tags, at the relevant point in the article. Remember to add, after the '==References==' header, the code <references/> which flushes out the references. Any reference not cited from a specific point in the article may be added after this as a bulleted-list (using '*', rather than '#' which is for numerical lists).

E.g.: <ref name=hedley>Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL, et al. 2004. Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002. ''JAMA'' ; '''291''': 2847–50. PMID 15199035</ref>

Use of PubMed

Abstracts of most medical journals are freely available at PubMed which includes a means of searching the MEDLINE database. Some tools have been created to help add a full reference to wikipedia articles:

• The PubMed site is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
• To just add a link to a PubMed article number (but without the whole reference), use: PMID xxxxxxxxx . Wikipedia automatically recognises "PMID", and will automatically provide a correct link to the abstract. You can also link to freely available articles in the PubMed Central using {{PMC|xxxxxxxxx}}.
• You can also use PM(C)ID in references, e.g. this one from bariatrics: <ref name=hedley>Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL, et al. 2004. Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002. ''JAMA'' ; '''291''': 2847–50. PMID 15199035</ref>

• Diberri's tool to convert a PMID reference number to a wikipedia journal reference is: http://diberri.dyndns.org/pubmed.html
• To add Wouterstomp's handy bookmarklet that uses Diberri's tool to make a wikipedia reference when used on a PubMed abstract page, do the following:
  • Create a bookmark within Internet Explorer (i.e. Favorites >> Add to Favorites...) with a suitable name.
  • Then right click on the bookmark just created and select Properties
  • Paste across to the URL box the following javascript line in its entirity: javascript:(function(){var url = location.href;var pmid = url.match(/list_uids\=(\d+)/);if( pmid ) w=open('http://diberri.dyndns.org/wikipedia/cite/?type=pmid&id=' + pmid[1],'add','width=800,height=300,scrollbars,resizable');})();
  • When the Bookmarklet is clicked whilst on a PubMed abstract page, it will open a new window with the properly formatted wikipedia citation for the article. The { {cite journal} } template may now be copied and pasted across.

Other resource templates

TEMPLATES FOR MEDICAL ARTICLES

Template	Info	Code	Examples
OMIM	OMIM provides a lot of useful info with regards to genetic diseases.	{{OMIM|xxxxxx}}	Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM): 190685
MedlinePlus	Info from NIH.	{{MedlinePlus|000195}}	MedlinePlus Encyclopedia: 000195
eMedicine	This is a very big and reliable source. When you want to link to http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1653.htm, use {{eMedicine|med|1653}}	{{eMedicine|XXX|xxx}}	med/1653 at eMedicine.
WhoNamedIt	This is an excellent reference for eponyms in medicine. When you want to link to http://www.whonamedit.com/synd.cfm/1792.html, use {{WhoNamedIt|synd|1792}}	{{WhoNamedIt|XXXX|xxxx}}	synd/1792 at Who Named It?
GPnotebook	This UK website provides an easy access for general practitioners and may be an interesting source.	{{GPnotebook|xxxxxxxxxx}}	. GPnotebook https://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/simplepage.cfm?ID=1053818915. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
Diseases Database	Nomen est omen.	{{DiseasesDB|xxxxx}}	Diseases Database (DDB): 3347
SUNY Downstate Medical Center	For anatomy figures.	{{SUNYAnatomyFigs|xx|xx|xx}}	Anatomy figure: 12:03-02 at Human Anatomy Online, SUNY Downstate Medical Center

Other good online resources

• National Organisation of Rare Disorders
• Merck Manuals
• The Virtual Hospital
• Ganfyd.org : ganfyd is a UK project, using mediawiki and restricted to qualified people (as a reaction to medical articles in wikipedia that can be edited by anyone). They have some 1600 medical articles.

Using categories

At the end of the article, place use [[Category:THECATEGORY]] in all the categories it belongs in, but please use the lowest appropriate sub-level.

Useful top-levels to start looking under include:

• Category:Medicine
• Category:Diseases
• Category:Medical treatments
• Category:Pharmacologic agents

More can be found on this subpage of the medicine portal.

References

{references/}