Identification of patients in medical publications: need for informed consent.

In medical journals patients are sometimes identified through clinical photographs or detailed descriptions of their sex, age, accommodation, occupation, etc. Occasionally, such details are relevant for the scientific message; sometimes they are included only because of a tradition of painstaking presentation of details in clinical reporting. How often a patient's identity is unduly disclosed is not known. Recent studies contain only a few examples.`'5 We have encountered several disclosures in our journals, which have caused reaction in patients and relatives, despite longstanding policies of masking the eyes and removing superfluous social details. To investigate current editorial opinion on this subject we approached several editors of medical journals and asked them to describe their policies and to comment on the possible need for a set ofguidelines.