6 How to Write a Review Article

The review article is the Rodney Dangerfield of medical ­writing. Review articles get no respect, even though, as discussed in Chap. 5, they are often indexed and counted in calculating a journal’s Impact Factor. Actually, many respected academicians write review articles, for both subscriber-based and controlled-circulation journals. Why do they do so? The answer is that most academic clinicians focus on one disease, such as Parkinson disease or heart failure, and by writing review articles, they assert their claims—mark their territory—on topics such as renin levels in hypertension or advances in the surgical management of prostate cancer.