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(Updated: 2024/03/21)

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

 

Brief Background

 

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal (ISSN: 2177-014X) appeared in 2004. It is an official publication of the Sociedade Brasileira de Coluna (Brazilian Spine Society) and has always been published quarterly, with articles in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Until 2018, the COLUNA/COLUMNA journal was printed, but from 2019 it went completely online.

In 2022 the journal adopted quarterly publication with continuous flow, making article publication faster.

The Editorial Board is made up of national and international members, who work free of charge to improve the quality of the journal, with the aim of making it attractive not only to national research, but also to the international scientific community. To this end, COLUNA/COLUMNA has partnerships with international affiliated societies: 

  • Mexican Association of Spine Surgeons - AMCICO;
  • Kazakhstan Association of Neurosurgeons
  • Paraguayan Association of Spine Surgery
  • Russian Association of Spine Neurosurgeons
  • Column Chapter of the Latin American Federation of Neurosurgery Societies - FLANC
  • Columna Chapter of the Colombian Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology - SCCOT
  • Columna Chapter of the Ecuadorean Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology - SEOT
  • Columna Chapter of the Venezuelan Society of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology - SVCOT
  • Mexico's Spine Chapter - Columna en linea
  • World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC)
  • Argentine Society of Vertebral Column Pathology - SAPCV
  • Chilean Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology - SCHOT
  • Ibero-Latin American Spine Society - SILACO
  • Latin American Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology - SLAOT
  • Brazilian Society of Neurosurgery - SBN
  • Portuguese Society of Spine Pathology - SPPCV
 

 

Open Science Complianc

 

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal is open access. The journal adopts a series of practices, such as an open access policy and a code of good practice for editors. In addition, it requires the precise indication of the role of each author in the preparation of Original Articles, Review Articles, Update Articles, Technical Notes, Case Reports and Preprints and encourages the sharing, citation and referencing of all data, program codes and other content underlying the texts of articles in order to facilitate the evaluation of research, the replicability of research, the preservation and reuse of content. The journal is completely online and provides the DOI for each article. Data sharing can be published on the Scielo Dataverse platform.

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal encourages the publication of Preprints articles on public platforms such as Scielo Preprints.

Also in line with open science practices, the journal offers authors and referees the option of opening up the peer review process, with or without identifying their names. Authorization to disclose the name can be given by the authors when submitting the article and by the evaluators when filling in the Open Science Compliance Form.

The contribution of the section editors is duly credited in the published article. The evaluators receive a statement of opinion on the manuscript and can also validate the activity on Publons.

 

 

Ethics in Publication

 

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal is dedicated to complying with good practices with regard to moral conduct in scientific journal publishing, based on the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) code of conduct. Studies carried out on humans must comply with ethical standards and with the participants' free and informed consent, according to Resolution 466/2012 of the Conselho Nacional de Saúde do Ministério da Saúde (Brazil), which deals with the Code of Ethics for Research on Human Beings.

Preventing negligence is also a crucial responsibility of the editor and editorial team: any form of unethical behavior, as well as plagiarism in any instance, is not accepted. When submitting articles to the journal, the authors declare that the content is original and guarantee that the work has not been published and is not under review/evaluation in any other journal.

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal is committed to ethics and quality in publication. We support standards of ethical behavior expected of all parties involved in publishing in our journal: the author, the journal editor and the reviewers. We do not accept plagiarism or any other unethical behavior.

 

 

Focus and Scope

 

COLUNA/COLUMNA is an open-access journal that publishes contributions from the national and international scientific community. Its aim is to publish articles that contribute to the improvement and development of practice, research and teaching on topics related to the Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Degenerative Rehabilitation, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Biomechanics and Rehabilitation and related areas.

The journal welcomes articles for the following sections: Original Articles, Review Articles, Update Articles, Technical Notes, Case Reports and Preprints. Articles can be written in Portuguese, Spanish or English. The concepts and statements contained in the papers are the sole responsibility of the authors. The articles published in the journal follow the uniform requirements proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

There is no fee for submitting and evaluating articles.

 

 

Digital Preservation

 

This journal follows the standards defined in the Digital Preservation Policy of the SciELO Program.

 

 

Indexing Sources

 

Databases

  • SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online
  • Scopus - Elsevier 
  • LILACS - Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences 
  • Redalyc - Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal 

 

Directories/Portals

  • DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Latindex - Regional Online Information System for Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal
 

 

Bibliographic Journal Information

 

Journal title: Column/Columna
Short title: Column/Columna
Published by: Brazilian Spine Society
Frequency: Quarterly with continuous flow
Type of publication: Continuous publication
Year the journal was created: 2004

 

 

Websites and Social Media

 

SITE - https://revistacoluna.wdcom.website/

 

 

EDITORIAL POLICY

 

Preprints

A Preprint is a complete scientific manuscript that is deposited by the authors on a platform. This is published after being accepted in the COLUNA/COLUMNA journal and on the SciELO Preprint platform. The Preprint can be viewed free of charge, allowing scientists to directly control the dissemination of their work to the global scientific community. In most cases, the same work published as a Preprint is also submitted for peer review in a journal. Thus, Preprints (not validated through peer-review) and journal publication (validated through peer-review) work in parallel as a communication system for scientific research.

Depositing a manuscript on more than one Preprints platform is not considered duplicate publication.

From 2021 we will accept preprints and the use of open science platforms as a way of encouraging communication between authors.

 

Peer Review Process

Peer Review

After the entire submission process, the editorial office and the preliminary analysis by the area editors (desk review), the articles can be sent for evaluation by the referees.  The area editors on the editorial board of the journal Coluna/Columna are mostly university professors, which allows for a careful and rigorous peer review.

All manuscripts, after approval by the area editors, will be analyzed by two or more reviewers. Articles that lack merit and do not fit in with the journal's editorial policy will be rejected and cannot be appealed. The reviewers' comments will be returned to the authors for changes to the text or justification for their retention. After approval by the reviewers, the articles will be forwarded to the area editors for final approval.

Articles accepted for publication may undergo editorial revisions to make them clearer and easier to understand, without altering the content.

Review process and additional information

  • All the scientific contributions are analyzed in the following order:
    Editorial Office → Area Editors and Editorial Board Evaluators.
  • All papers submitted to the COLUNA/COLUMNA journal will be subject to an initial desk review by the editors, who will decide whether or not to send them to peer review.
  • Only articles that strictly comply with the specified standards and contain all the required supplementary documents will be sent to the reviewers.
  • In line with Open Science communication practices, the journal's editorial policy now includes opening up the peer review process in agreement with the referee by filling in the Open Science Compliance Form.
  • If the documents are not sent in full, the article will not be submitted.
  • Authors have 20 days from the date of receipt of the communication to make the changes requested by the reviewers. Failure to meet this deadline will result in the article being withdrawn from the review process.
  • Bulky or substantial changes will not be accepted after the article has been accepted for publication, nor in the final proof of the article.
  • Communications will be made exclusively by system message and e-mail.
  • Requests sent to the COLUNA/COLUMNA journal before the article is approved must be made through the SciELO Submission System. And after the article has been approved, they should be sent by e-mail to coluna.columna@uol.com.br and no longer through the SciELO Submission System.
  • The subject referenced in the e-mail coluna.columna@uol.com.br should not be changed and questions not pertinent to the subject cited should be sent in another communication with an appropriate subject and article identification number.
  • The final layout versions (Portuguese, English or Spanish) will be sent to the author, who should return within 48 hours with only minimal changes. If the author does not respond by the deadline, these will be considered the final versions for publication, with no possibility of subsequent changes.

 

Open data

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal encourages the sharing, citation and referencing of all data, program codes and other content underlying the texts of articles in order to facilitate the evaluation of research, the replicability of research, and the preservation and reuse of content.  Data sharing can be published on the SciELO Dataverse platform.

Citations should facilitate access to the content of the research, so as articles, books and online publications are cited, the data should be cited in an appropriate place in the text and the reference cited in the reference list according to Vancouver standards.

 

Fees

COLUNA/COLUMNA does not charge any fees (APC) for texts published or submitted for evaluation, review, publication, distribution or download. The publication is completely free and open access.

Its financial sustainability comes from the Brazilian Spine Society.

 

Ethics and Misconduct, Correction and Retraction Policy

COLUNA/COLUMNA publishes Errata and Retraction Notices depending on the situation and in accordance with the Good Practice Guide for strengthening ethics in scientific publishing

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been previously published (except in the form of an abstract, published lecture or academic thesis). The article will first be evaluated for compliance with the Journal's rules.

 

Policy on Conflict of Interest

Authors are obliged to disclose any potential conflict of interest. Conflicts of interest can be of a personal, commercial, political, academic or financial nature. Conflicts of interest can occur when authors, reviewers or editors have interests that can influence the preparation or evaluation of manuscripts. When submitting the manuscript, authors are responsible for acknowledging and disclosing financial or other conflicts that may have influenced the work and signing the Conflict of Interest Statement.

For Proofreaders and Editors:

Declare any conflicts of interest directly to the journal or the editor-in-chief before starting the review process or editorial decisions.

Clearly detail the relevant conflicts or confirm the absence of conflicts.

 

Adoption of similarity software

COLUNA/COLUMNA uses CopySpider  software to check the originality of articles before publication. Similarity will be considered when the report generated by the program shows long texts (more than 30%) that demonstrate plagiarism. When plagiarism is detected, the authors are informed, with a report generated by the software. If duplicates are found, the authors are contacted and the article is rejected for publication.

 

Gender and Sex Issues

The journal COLUNA/COLUMNA and its editorial team must always comply with the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines. The SAGER guidelines comprise a set of guidelines that guide the reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis and the results and interpretation of findings. In addition, the COLUNA/COLUMNA observes a policy of gender equality in the formation of its editorial board.

 

Ethics Committee

Bioethics of experiments on human beings

Experiments involving human beings must follow the specific resolution of the National Health Council (No. 196/96), including the signing of an Informed Consent Form and the protection of volunteers' privacy. In experimental work involving human beings, the authors must indicate whether the procedures followed the ethical standards of the committee responsible for human experimentation (institutional and national) and the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, revised in 2008. A declaration of approval from the local ethics committee must be sent via the Brazil Platform. Studies carried out on humans must comply with ethical standards and with the participants' free and informed consent in accordance with Resolution 466/2012 of the National Health Council of the Ministry of Health (Brazil), which deals with the Code of Ethics for Research on Human Beings and, for authors outside Brazil, must comply with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)..

 

Bioethics of animal experiments

The work described in the article must have been carried out in accordance with ethical principles in animal experimentation, in accordance with Law 11.794/08 which establishes procedures for the scientific use of animals and makes it compulsory to submit research projects to institutional research ethics committees. For more information, consult Conselho Nacional de Controle de Experimentação Animal (CONCEA) and the Colégio Brasileiro de Experimentação Animal (COBEA). 

 

Copyright

Authors of articles published in COLUNA/COLUMNA maintain the copyright of their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons License, which allows articles to be reused and distributed without restriction, provided that the original work is correctly cited. The authors grant COLUNA/COLUMNA the right of first publication.

 

Intellectual Property and Terms of Use

Responsibility of the site:

  • The publication reserves the right to make normative, orthographic and grammatical changes to the originals in order to maintain the cultured standard of the language, while respecting the authors' style.
  • The originals will not be returned to the authors.

Responsibility of the author:

  • The authors retain full rights to their work published in the COLUNA/COLUMNA journal, and its total or partial reprint, deposit or republication is subject to the indication of first publication in the journal, using the CC-BY license.
  • The source of the original publication must be cited;
  • The opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.
  • COLUNA/COLUMNA encourages Authors to self-archive their accepted manuscripts by publishing them on personal blogs, institutional repositories and academic social media, as well as posting them on their personal social media, provided that the full citation to the journal's website version is included.

 

Sponsors and Promotion Agencies

 

 


 

EDITORIAL BOARD

 

Editor-in-Chief

   

 

Area Editors

 

 

Basic Sciences/ Other

Cervical Spine

Degenerative

Deformities

Trauma

Tumor/Infection

Minimally Invasive Surgery

Biomechanics

 

 

 

Ibero-American co-editors

   

 

Associate Editors

   

 

International co-editor

   

 

Editorial board

   

 

Foreign correspondents 

   

 

Consulting editor

 
  • Arthur Tadeu de Assis, (São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
 

 

Managing Editor

 
  • Ana Carolina de Assis, (São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
 

 

Editorial production

 
  • Atha Comunicação e Editora, (São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
 

 


 

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

 

 

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal publishes articles related to the Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Degenerative Rehabilitation, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Biomechanics and Rehabilitation and related areas.

The journal welcomes articles for the following sections: Original Articles, Review Articles, Update Articles, Technical Notes, Case Reports and Preprints. Articles can be written in Portuguese, Spanish or English. The concepts and statements contained in the papers are the sole responsibility of the authors. Articles published in the journal follow the uniform requirements proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

 

Authors' Contribution

The declaration of the authors' contribution must be included on the title page of the article using two minimum criteria for authorship:

1. Conceptualization

2. Data curation

3. Formal Analysis

4. Acquisition of financing

5. Research

6. Methodology

7. Project Management

8. Resources

9. Programs

10. Supervision

11. Validation

12. Visualization

13. Writing - Original Draft

14. Writing - Proofreading and Editing

(CREDIT Taxonomy Structure )

 

All authors must be included in the declaration, according to the model:

"Each author has made an individual and significant contribution to the development of this article. I define H: Methodology and supervision; Meves R: formal analysis and data curation; Menezes CM: Validation and writing - proofreading and editing. "

 

Presentation and submission of the manuscript

 

The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal uses the SciELO online publication and submission system. Authors should follow the instructions on how to register and include their article in the system itself. The authors are solely responsible for the concepts expressed in the articles.  Articles may be reproduced in whole or in part, provided the source is acknowledged. The entire content of the journal, except where noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License CC-BY

The statements published in the articles are the sole responsibility of the authors. 

The article should be submitted on the SciELO submission platform and should be typed double-spaced, preferably using the Microsoft Word, with 3 cm margins and Times New Roman font, size 12, and should not exceed 20 pages, including title page, abstracts, text, acknowledgments, references and tables. PDF files will not be accepted. The article must contain:

Cover sheet containing:

  • Type of article (Original Article, Review Article, etc.)
  • Title of the work (concise and informative, preferably up to 90 words), in Portuguese, Spanish and English; 
  • Full name of each author (without abbreviations);  
  • Institution (the hierarchical units should be presented in descending order, for example, university, faculty and department; to which each belongs (the names of institutions and programs should preferably be presented in full and in the original language of the institution or in the English version when the writing is not Latin [e.g. Arabic, Mandarin, Greek]); with numerical and sequential indication, using superscript Arabic numerals. If there is more than one institutional affiliation, indicate only the most relevant one; place where the work and/or research was carried out; 
  • Name of corresponding author with full address, telephone number, e-mail address.
  • Author identification: 
    The ORCID number (Open Researcher and Contributor ID of each of the authors must be given on the title page, below the name of the respective author with the full link. 
  • Declaration of authors' contributions:
    All authors must be included in the declaration, according to the model:
    "Each author has made an individual and significant contribution to the development of this article. I define H: Methodology and supervision; Meves R: formal analysis and data curation; Menezes CM: Validation and writing - proofreading and editing."
  • Conflicts of interest: 
    They must be reproduced objectively when there is one, and when there isn't, present the statement: "The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in carrying out this work." Access to the Conflicts of Interest form.

 

 

Presentation of the text

Study design: It is original research that makes up the majority of publications in scientific journals. Ex: The design used an experimental, prospective controlled, randomized and pre-test / post-test study.

Abstract and Descriptors: abstract, in Portuguese, English and Spanish, preferably 250 words. 

Original articles should be structured (Objective, Methods, Results, Conclusions), highlighting the most significant data from the work.

For Review, Update and Case Report articles, the abstract should be unstructured.

Descriptors: Below the abstract, specify a minimum of three and a maximum of six descriptors that define the subject of the work. The descriptors should be based on DECS - Descriptors in Health Sciences or MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), with Portuguese, English and Spanish versions for each descriptor.

 

Level of Evidence and Type of Study: In addition, abstracts should include the Level of Evidence and the Type of Study according to the ranking table attached at the end of this text*.

Documents: Authors must attach the following to the SciELO online publication and submission system: a) Declaration of Conflict of Interest; b) Certificate of Approval of the Work by the Institution's Research Ethics Committee when the research involves experimentation on human beings or animals; c) Documentation regarding any sources of funding for the work; d) Declaration that the participants have signed a Free Informed Consent document, when it involves clinical research with human beings.

Introduction: The introduction should contain an objective justification for the study with references pertinent to the subject, without carrying out an extensive review, and the aim of the article. 

Methods: should clearly describe the selection of the individuals involved in the research (patients or laboratory animals, including controls). Identify age, gender and other important characteristics of the individual. The definition and relevance of race or ethnicity are ambiguous. Authors should be particularly careful when using these categories. Identify the methods, equipment (give the name and address of the manufacturer in brackets) and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other researchers to reproduce the results. Indicate whether the study was approved by the Institution's Ethics Committee (Institution of affiliation of at least one of the authors) and inform the respective identification number. It should also state whether the Informed Consent Form has been signed by all participants.

Results: should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables and figures. Not all the data in the tables or illustrations should be repeated in the text, and only the important observations should be emphasized or summarized.

Discussion: should emphasize the new and most important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow. The data presented in the introduction or results should not be repeated. New hypotheses should only be established when they are clearly justified.

Conclusions: should be linked to the objectives of the study, avoiding unqualified statements that are not fully supported by the data. Presenting a detailed conclusive argument with supporting data.

Acknowledgments: when necessary, briefly thank people who have collaborated intellectually, but whose contribution does not justify co-authorship, or those who have provided material, technical or advisory support. The author must ensure that people, names, agree to be called that. Financial support for research and scholarships must be acknowledged in this section (agency and grant number).

References: must be strictly in accordance with the instructions: Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, updated in October 2007. Or on the Pubmed website. All authors and works cited in the text must appear in the references and vice versa. References should be numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text, in superscript format. "("e.g.: ."1,2,3"")" Cite all authors up to a maximum of six; if there are more, cite the first six followed by et al. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus list of journals. All references from the current year or five previous years should be in bold.

 

Examples:

Journal articles

Okashi OA, Du H, Al-Assam H. Automatic spine curvature estimation from X-ray images of a mouse model. Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2017;140:175-84.

Butler JS, Lui DF, Malhotra K, Suarez-Huerta ML, Yu H, Selvadurai S, et al. 360-Degree Complex Primary Reconstruction Using Porous Tantalum Cages for Adult Degenerative Spinal Deformity. Global Spine J. 2019;9(6):613-18

 

Books

Pudles E, Defino HLA.   The spine. São Paulo: Artmed; 2013.

 

Book chapters

Zardo E, Abramczuk J, Ziegler MS. Embryology of the Vertebral Column. In: Pudles E, Defino HLA.   The spine. São Paulo: Artmed; 2013. p. 17-22.

 

Dissertations and Theses:

Giglio CA. Functional and histological characterization of experimental models for the study of spinal cord trauma [thesis]. Ribeirão Preto: Universidade de São Paulo; 2000.

 

Electronic material

Author(s). Article title. Abbreviated journal title [support]. Date of publication [date of access with the expression "access on"]; volume (number): initial-final pages or [approximate number of pages]. E-mail address with the expression "Available at:"

Pavezi N, Flores D, Perez CB. Proposal of a set of metadata for describing photographic archives considering Nobrade and Sepiades. Transinf. [Internet]. 2009 [access in 2010 Nov 8];21(3):197-205. Available at: http://revistas.puc-campinas.edu.br/transinfo/search.php?op=search&query=metadados&limithttps://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-37862009000300003

 

Data Sharing:

Pavezi N, Flores D, Perez CB. Proposal of a set of metadata for describing photographic archives considering Nobrade and Sepiades. Transinf. [Internet]. 2009. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-37862009000300003.

 

Figures: illustrations (photographs, drawings, graphs, etc.) should be cited as figures and numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals according to the order in which they were first cited in the text. Pictures must be sent in tif or jpg format with 300 DPI resolution, in large format. Figures should be sent in an editable file (Word or Excel) along with the originals. Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have been previously published elsewhere. For all open access figures, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non-open access journals. Permission must be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source must be included in the list of references.

Tables: Tables should be spaced 1.5 and should be designed to be one (8.7 cm) or two (18 cm) columns wide and with up to 12 lines. Each table should have a short title. Explanatory notes will be included in footnotes. The table should contain averages and measures of dispersion (Standard Deviation, Standard Error of the Mean, etc.), with no irrelevant decimal places. Abbreviations should match those used in the text and figures. The item identification codes in the table must be listed in the order in which they appear horizontally and must be identified by the standard symbols. Charts and tables should be sent as original editable files (Word, Excel) and not as images.

Abbreviations and acronyms: must be preceded by the full name when cited for the first time in the text. Figures and tables must contain their meaning below the figure or table.

 

Types of articles 

Original article: The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal accepts all types of original research in the areas of Basic Science, Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Rehabilitation, Degenerative, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Biomechanics and Rehabilitation and related areas, including research with human beings and experimental research. The article must contain the following items: Structured abstract, keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and conclusions.

Review articles: Review articles are usually commissioned by the editor from authors with proven experience in the areas of Basic Science, Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Rehabilitation, Degenerative, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Biomechanics and Rehabilitation and related areas. They express the author's experience and should not just reflect a review of the literature. Review articles should address specific topics with the aim of updating readers on specific themes, topics or issues. The Editorial Board will assess the quality of the article, the relevance of the chosen topic and the proven prominence of the authors in the specific area covered. Failure to comply with any of the above will result in the article being rejected by the editors, without undergoing peer review.

Systematic review/update/meta-analysis: The COLUNA/COLUMNA journal encourages authors to submit systematic literature review articles in the areas of Basic Science, Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Rehabilitation, Degenerative, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Biomechanics and Rehabilitation and related areas. The Editorial Board will assess the quality of the article, the relevance of the chosen topic, the bibliographic search procedure, the criteria for including the articles and the statistical treatment used. Inadequacy in any of the above items will result in the article being rejected by the editors of the area, without undergoing peer review. 

Case report: Specific clinical cases that provide relevant and illustrative information on the diagnosis or treatment of a particular case that is rare in Basic Science, Spine, Spinal Pathologies, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Rehabilitation, Degenerative, Tumor/Infection, Minimally Invasive Surgery and related areas. Articles should be objective and precise, containing the following items: abstract; introduction; objective report containing the history, physical examination and complementary examination findings, as well as treatment and follow-up; discussion explaining in detail the clinical implications of the case in question, and comparing with data from the literature, including similar cases reported in the literature; bibliographical references.

Technical Note: It is intended to disseminate a diagnostic method or experimental surgical technique, a new surgical instrument, an orthopaedic implant.  Must have: Title, Abstract (unstructured), Descriptors, Explanatory Introduction, Materials and Methods, Technique, Final Comments and References. 

 

 

Table Level of Evidence and Type of Study*

 

Levels of evidence for primary research questionsa

[This table was adopted from material published by the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford, UK. For more information, visit www.cebm.net]

 

Types of study


Level

Therapeutic studies - Investigation of treatment results

Prognostic studies - Investigating the effect of a patient characteristic on the outcome of the disease

Diagnostic studies - Investigation of a diagnostic test

Economic and decision analysis - Development of an economic or decision model

I

High quality randomized clinical trial with or without statistically significant difference, but with narrow confidence intervals

Systematic reviewb of Level 1 RCTs (randomized controlled trials) (and study results were homogeneousc)

High quality prospective studyd (all patients were enrolled at the same stage of the disease, with > 80% of patients enrolled)

Systematic Reviewb of Level I Studies

Testing of previously developed diagnostic criteria on consecutive patients (with gold standard reference applied)

Systematic Reviewb of Level I Studies

Logical costs and alternatives; values obtained from many studies; with multi-way sensitivity analyses

Systematic Reviewb of Level I Studies

II

Lower quality RCTs (e.g. < 80% follow-up, no randomization code masking or inadequate randomization)

Prospective comparatived studye 

Systematic reviewb of Level II or Level I studies with discrepant results

Retrospective studyf

Untreated controls of an ECRC

Lower quality prospective study (e.g. patients enrolled at different stages of the disease or <80% follow-up)

Systematic Reviewb of Level II Studies

Development of diagnostic criteria in consecutive patients (with gold standard reference applied)

Systematic Reviewb of Level II Studies

Logical costs and alternatives; values obtained from many studies; with multi-way sensitivity analyses

Systematic Reviewb of Level II Studies

III

Case-control studyg

Retrospectivef and comparativee study

Systematic Reviewb of Level III Studies

Case-control studyg

Study of non-consecutive patients; no uniformly applied gold standard reference

Systematic reviewb of Level III studies

Case-control study Poor reference standard

Analyses based on alternatives and limited costs; and poor estimates

Systematic Reviewb of Level III Studies

IV

Case seriesh

Case series

Case-control study

Poor reference standard

Analyses without sensitivity analyses

V

Expert opinion

Expert opinion

Expert opinion

Expert opinion

aComplete assessment of the quality of each study requires the evaluation of all aspects of the study design.
bCombination of results from two or more previous studies.
cStudies have provided consistent results.
dStudy started before the first patient was enrolled.
ePatients treated one way (e.g. cemented hip arthroplasty) compared to a group of patients treated another way (e.g. uncemented hip arthroplasty) at the same institution.
fThe study began after the first patient was enrolled.
gPatients identified for the study on the basis of their clinical outcome, called "cases", for example total arthroplasty failure, are compared with patients who had no outcomes, called "controls", for example successful total hip arthroplasty.
hPatients treated one way with no comparison group of patients treated another way.

 

 

Supplementary Documents

 

 

 

 

Contact

 

Sociedade Brasileira de Coluna
Al. Lorena, 1304 cj. 1406/1407, Cep: 01424-001
São Paulo, SP, Brazil, 
Tel.: (55 11) 3088-6616
E-mail: coluna.columna@uol.com.br

 

 


 

Sociedade Brasileira de Coluna Al. Lorena, 1304 cj. 1406/1407, 01424-001 São Paulo, SP, Brasil, Tel.: (55 11) 3088-6616 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: coluna.columna@uol.com.br