General preparation All authors have participated according to the criteria for authors The paper is not published elsewhere or under consideration in another journal All unpublished references are enclosed, as well as all papers written by the same authors dealing with the same patient groups, etc. Financial and other conflicts of interests are disclosed in the paper When appropriate, ethics committee approval is mentioned in the paper If this is an RCT, provide the CONSORT flow diagram All persons mentioned in the Acknowledgement have been informed about this and have given their approval The language in the final version has been checked by a professional linguist, well-versed in medical English All pages are paginated (starting from the Title page) The statistical treatment and presentation follow the suggestions given in the Instruction to authors
Title page: A running head is given on the Title page (no longer than 8 words)
Abstract: A structured Abstract is given followed by 3-8 keywords according to MeSH
References: References are numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text References are formatted according to the journal style. For any reference cited "in press" the article is included Personal communications and unpublished observations are not used as numbered references but are written as footnotes.
Figures: The Figures are numbered with Arabic numerals The Figures are sent as separate files formatted according to the rules of the journal (preferably in tif format). Photographs of recognizable persons are accompanied by a signed release from the patient or guardian authorizing publication Figure legends are written in the ordinary manuscript, not on the figures
Tables: The Tables are numbered with Roman numerals
