在涉及人体的研究报告中，作者必须取得并提交患者签署的知情同意书，如患者为未成年或无能力同意的成人，则必须取得患者父母、亲属的同意；编辑必须保护个人信息，包括医患身份，不可泄漏任何可能透露患者身份的信息，照片则需隐藏含患者身份特征的信息。

Editors should protect the confidentiality of individual information (e.g. that obtained through the doctor–patient relationship). It is therefore almost always necessary to obtain written informed consent from patients described in case reports and for photographs of patients. It may be possible to publish without explicit consent if the report is important to public health (or is in some other way important); consent would be unusually burdensome to obtain; and a reasonable individual would be unlikely to object to publication (all three conditions must be met).