השוואת שיטות

	דיווח מקרה מטה-אנליטי	סדרת מקרים
תחום	אפידמיולוגיה	אפידמיולוגיה
משפחה	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
שנת המקור	2000s–2010s (formalized methodology)	Longstanding; systematized in 20th century clinical research
הוגה השיטה	Developed iteratively in clinical epidemiology; formalized guidance by Murad et al. (2018)	Historical clinical practice; formalized in modern evidence-based medicine literature
סוג	Synthesis / secondary research design	Observational descriptive study
מקור מכונן	Murad, M. H., Sultan, S., Haffar, S., & Bazerbachi, F. (2018). Methodological quality and synthesis of case series and case reports. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 23(2), 60–63.	Case series. Wikipedia.
כינויים	pooled case report analysis, systematic case report review, case report meta-analysis, MACR	case series report, clinical case series, consecutive case series, patient series
קשורות	3	5
תקציר	A meta-analytic case report is a secondary research methodology that systematically identifies, appraises, and quantitatively or qualitatively pools data from multiple published individual case reports on the same clinical phenomenon. It is used most often when randomized trials or cohort data are unavailable — particularly for rare diseases, uncommon drug reactions, or novel presentations — and transforms isolated anecdotal observations into a more robust aggregate picture.	A case series is a descriptive observational study that documents the characteristics, clinical course, and outcomes of a group of patients who share a common condition, exposure, or intervention. Unlike case reports, which focus on a single patient, a case series aggregates data across multiple patients (typically three or more) to identify patterns, generate hypotheses, and characterize rare or novel conditions — without a concurrent control group.