Publication of COVID‐19 case reports: Are we hurrying?

Letter to the editor regarding dental research challenges in the time of COVID-19 and future perspectives

“…This has resulted in a relatively large number of research papers on COVID-19, despite all limitations inflicted by the pandemic. While the information relayed by these papers is extremely helpful and necessary to disseminate knowledge on the disease, legitimate concern has been raised [4] as to whether accelerated publication and presentation of data is 100% beneficial and would not be misleading in certain situations. For example, there have been case reports of oral manifestations of COVID-19, without a definitive diagnosis of the disease [4].…”

“…While the information relayed by these papers is extremely helpful and necessary to disseminate knowledge on the disease, legitimate concern has been raised [4] as to whether accelerated publication and presentation of data is 100% beneficial and would not be misleading in certain situations. For example, there have been case reports of oral manifestations of COVID-19, without a definitive diagnosis of the disease [4]. Naturally, such issues are inevitable in paper publication, and we are not suggesting that fast processing of COVID-19-related papers should be discontinued but are proposing that the readers carefully analyze the data that is being presented to them in these critical times before implementing them in their research.…”

“…Positive efforts to accelerate research on COVID-19 include the development of the CTAP (Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program) by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) [4] and a "rapidresponse research agenda," created by the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) [5]. The former supports clinical trials and applies all existing techniques to provide patients with novel treatments without delay, while simultaneously assessing their safety.…”

SARS‐CoV‐2 oral‐associated lesions: Discussion of elicited response

“…In response to Dr. Lombardo and Pagnoncellia, Dr. Vieira, and Dr. Rocha, our publication does not want to be opportunistic, and it pretends to be a motivating document for other researchers, among which it would be excellent to have their contribution to comment, and if it was the case to contradict those findings we humbly found and published in our article (Lombardo & Pagnoncellia, 2020;Rocha et al, 2020;Vieira, 2020).…”