A case report as an inductive approach

As disciplines of clinical dentistry, operative dentistry, restorative dentistry, and endodontics which belong to the scope of Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics (RDE) deal with anatomic structures, hard and soft tissue diseases and their pathologies, clinical protocols, restorative materials and endodontic medicaments, and tissue reactions against biomaterials or pathogens. The area is one of the most dynamic and growing disciplines in health science. When a new adhesive product for the adhesion of restorative materials to tooth substrates, or a new NiTi file with an innovative design and a new alloy metal is introduced in the market, the clinical protocols should be changed to maximize the efficiency of the new products. In addition to the manufacturer, clinicians and scholars worldwide devote themselves to finding out and searching for an optimal protocol and the combination of materials that can be used with the new material. They also keep up with the clinical performances to evaluate the long-term success rates and to prevent adverse complications.

A researcher gathers a lot of information, such as experimental results, and tries to draw conclusions directly from them. A researcher also transforms novel ideas substantiated from daily practices into a specific hypothesis. If the hypothesis is accepted after relevant experiments, the idea obtained from daily practices is true and can be recommended as a protocol to our colleague clinicians. A great number of such minute ideas gather together to develop a standard clinical protocol and to form a theory. Since we are familiar with this mode of reasoning, most research papers are based on the deductive approaches. However, in the healthcare professions including clinical dentistry, a careful observation on an individual case may suggest very important information, especially on rare conditions. Clinicians should be used to observe their patients' signs and symptoms carefully, to gather the clinical findings, to substantiate the underlying characteristics, and to report the whole profiles as a case report. Because a case report is a type of inductive approach and lacks supporting data, it is apt to be less scientific than the deductive approaches with multiple controlled data.

As a scientific research journal in the scope of clinical dentistry, RDE welcomes case reports containing scientific investigations that can be organized by detailed reports of individual patient profiles, scrupulous inspection, systematic thinking and inductive summarization. RDE has published many interesting case reports in the recent issues. A case report may suggest the effects and mechanism of diseases, materials, medicaments, and clinical procedures. It also plays a very important role in the dental education of future professionals such as dental students and residents. Through the scrupulous observation and scientific thinking, a valuable insight on the research topics and the clinical protocols can be obtained, which in turn can contribute to the improvement of the health of mankind.

Byeong-Hoon Cho,

Editor-in-Chief

Vol. 37, No. 4, 2012