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Margaret A. Winker, MD

JAMA. 1999;281:1129-1130.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The abstract is, aside from the title, the most frequently read and most easily accessed portion of an article reporting original biomedical research. The abstract provides an irreplaceable resource for busy clinicians, researchers, and authors searching for pertinent material in the source journal or in computerized databases. JAMA began publishing abstracts with articles on January 7, 1956, predating MEDLINE by a decade; other journals followed suit.¹ Structure was not added to JAMA abstracts until 1991² when the structured format developed by Haynes et al³ and tested⁴ and evolved⁵ in Annals of Internal Medicine with the help of Edward J. Huth, MD, then Annals' editor, was adopted. Reading the abstract has never been a substitute for reading the article: crucial details of the study, such as patient selection and follow-up, definition of outcome measures, and study limitations, receive short shrift in the terse style of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Dr Winker is Deputy Editor of JAMA.

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