PEDIATRICS Vol. 60 No. 5 November 1977, pp. 762
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Case Reports Are Valuable

Edward B. Shaw M.D.1

1 University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94143

The excellent case report "Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome (MLNS) in the Continental United States" by Goldsmith et al. (Pediatrics 57:431, March 1976) is an example of the importance of the report of a single case. This should alert others to this syndrome in their own practices.

I am reminded of a note by Roger Lee1 in 1952: "Are three cases enough to make a series? Parenthetically I have a fondness for the carefully reported single case, which in the days before mass production was a feature of a medical journal .... a series of three cases leads to statistical atrocities and aberrations and deductions."