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Background. «Case reports» is the title of a column in the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association devoted to educational patient stories accompanied by an expert commentary. The aim of this study is to describe the patients and authors in this column since its introduction in 1999. Material and methods. The study is based on electronic literature searches in the Journal´s internet archive (2000–2011) supplemented by manual searches in the printed edition (1999). The medical specialties of the authors were defined on the basis of their workplace affiliations. Results. Literature searches identified 157 case reports with accompanying expert commentaries. Among the 157 patients included there were 84 (54%) women. The most frequent age category was 51-60 years with an age range from 0-90 years. First authors were most often affiliated to departments of internal medicine with accompanying subspecialties (34%); neurology (13%); general surgery with subspecialties (11%); and paediatric departments (10%). Para-clinical specialties were mainly represented by co-authorships; most frequent were histopathology and radiology. Of 676 authorships, only 7 (1.0%) were affiliated to psychiatry and only 5 (0.7%) to general practice. Interpretation. The column «Case reports» in the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association has in the past 12 years illustrated a wide range of patients, but the medical specialties are unevenly represented. It might be desirable to have more articles originating from psychiatry and general practice.

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