Beginning January 1998, we will add a new section to our journal. This new section will deal with common controversies in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care. For example, is the use of pulmonary artery catheters justified in critically ill patients? Should a patient with tricyclic antidepressant overdose be treated with bicarbonate? What about the use of steroids in the management of patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome?

I would like to encourage you to submit your papers with CONS and PROS for each diagnostic technique or therapy discussed. We are interested in your personal experience compared with was has been written in the literature and considered “standard of care” by many.

How to submit a controversy?

Submission on diskettes or by e-mail is encouraged. Disk should be DOS formatted. Files should be in ASCII or HTML format. Please follow the instructions below for format of manuscript. All figures must be e-mailed or placed in a diskette in a GIF or JPEG format and must not exceed 100K of space. Please e-mail your manuscripts to: Joseph Varon, MD, FACP, FCCP.

All paper manuscripts should be submitted in triplicate to the Editor: Joseph Varon, MD, FACP, FCCP, Editor-in-Chief, The Internet Journal of Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine, 4915 Braesvalley Drive, Houston, Texas 77096, United States of America

When submitting a “controversy” manuscript by mail, please ensure the top copy is typed on one side of the paper only. Additional copies should be photocopied on both sides of the sheets to keep the mailing weight down. Also, rejected paper manuscripts will not be returned to the authors (except for original illustrations).

A cover letter should be sent with every manuscript to identify the person (with address and telephone number) responsible for correspondence concerning the article. This letter should make it clear that the final manuscript has been seen and approved by all authors. The Editors of The Internet Journal of Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine expect all authors to disclose any commercial associations they have that might give rise to a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.

Controversy papers must not exceed 4,000 words and should not include more than 4-6 illustrations and tables. Note that each separate part of a figure count as an illustration. Up to 140 references are permitted.

All controversy manuscripts must be written in standard grammatical English; this is the responsibility of the author. They should be typed with double-line spacing throughout, using only one side of standard-sized typewriter paper. Margins should be at least 2.5 cm. The approximate positions of figures and tables must be marked in the margin. These manuscripts should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (Ann Intern Med 1997;126:36-47)

I look forward to receiving your manuscript in the very near future.