Correction—foreign bodies

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 7, September 2007, Page 402 Letters

In the June 2008 issue, an error was introduced into Drs Dehghani and Ludemann’s article “Aspirated foreign bodies in children: BC Children’s Hospital emergency room protocol” (BCMJ 2008;50:252-256). 

On pages 255–256, mention is made of three conditions (upper airway obstruction, bilateral foreign body aspiration, and clinically unstable children) under which bronchoscopy should not be considered. These conditions preclude the use of the BC Children’s Hospital Aspirated Foreign Body Protocol but are not contraindications to broncho­scopy in children. 

Certain conditions which preclude rigid laryngoscopy (such as cervical spine instability, man­dibular hypoplasia and macro­glossia or glossoptosis) would also preclude the use of this protocol; in such cases, flexible endoscopy and intubation and/or temporary tracheo­tomy or bronchotomy might be needed to facilitate diagnosis, patient ventilation, and airway foreign body removal.

We sincerely apologize to Drs Dehghani and Ludemann and to our readers for any confusion caused by this error.

. Correction—foreign bodies. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 7, September, 2007, Page(s) 402 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply