Re: Canada’s largest purpose-built public day-care surgery centre

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 63, No. 10, December 2021, Page 409 Letters

The conclusions in this article [BCMJ 2021;63:330-335] are predicated on two observations—that the admission rate for outpatient surgery is very low and that the readmission rate is also very low. What the study does not address is a reasonable explanation for the difference in admission rates for outpatient surgery in the setting of a hospital and that of a same-day surgery centre. What am I missing? I suspect there is a strong bias at play.
—Scott A. Lang, MD
Calgary, AB

This letter was submitted in response to “Canada’s largest purpose-built public day-care surgery centre: A retrospective audit of patients requiring transfer to an inpatient hospital.”

Read the author’s response in “Re: Canada’s largest purpose-built public day-care surgery centre. Author replies.”

Scott A. Lang, MD. Re: Canada’s largest purpose-built public day-care surgery centre. BCMJ, Vol. 63, No. 10, December, 2021, Page(s) 409 - 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