Structured Abstracts. Narrative Review Resumos estruturados. Revisão narrativa

ABSTRACTPurpose : To summarize the main findings from research on structured abstracts. Methods: A narrative review of all therelevant papers known to the author was conducted. Results : Authors and readers judged the structured abstracts to bemore useful than traditional ones. In 1987 the Ad Hoc Working Group for Critical Appraisal of the Medical Literatureproposed guidelines for informative seven-headings abstracts. In 1990 Haynes et al. reconsidered the structured abstractof clinical research and review articles and proposed revised guidelines. Nowadays, most abstracts are informative, andthe most commonly used structure is IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion) format. Conclusions :There are many variations in the structured-abstract formats prescribed by different journals. But even in recent years, notall abstracts of original articles are structured. More research is needed on a number of questions related to the quality andutility of structured abstracts. Key words