医学论文英文摘要写作（1）

叮铃铃……上课啦！准备好了吗？上节课，我们学习了医学论文英文标题的写作。从这节课起，我们开始学习医学论文英文摘要的写作。为什么呢？国内外大部分检索工具都是文摘型的，即：只收录论文题目和摘要等。怎样才能写出一篇符合国际要求的英文摘要呢？在大量阅读的基础上， 掌握摘要写作知识，并反复实践。为了帮助大家早日学会摘要的写作，小编将工作语言换成英语。

The first question is what an abstract is? Abstracts have been defined by many scholars. Some of the well accepted ones are listed.

An abstract is defined as an abbreviated, accurate representation of the content of a document, preferably prepared by its author(s) for the publication with it. Such abstracts are also useful in access publications and machine-readable data bases.

       (The American National Standards Institute, 1979, p.3, in Cremmins, 1982)

An abstract should be viewed as a mini-version of the paper. An abstract should provide a brief summary of each of the main sections of the paper: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion. As Houghton (1975) puts it, “An abstract can be defined as a summary of the information in a document.”

                                                         (Day, 1998)

An abstract is a complete but concise and informative account of your work, i.e. a condensation that makes sense without reference to the full document. It is not merely a descriptive guide to the content of the paper, but rather it is an abbreviated version of the paper (except for very long review-style papers or monographs, in which descriptive abstracts may be used.)

                                                        (Tippett, 2004)

The three definitions, given by different people in different years, delineate the very essence of abstracts by various means such as wording. To define the nature of abstracts, they employ different key words. One uses “summary”, one “representation” and one “account”. However, what they intend to convey is the same, i.e. abstracts are concise informative or descriptive “guides” to journal article, research report, dissertation, book etc.

Here is a sample abstract.

Gestational Hypertension and Preeclampsia in Living Kidney Donors

Amit X. Garg, M.D., Ph.D., Immaculate F. Nevis, Ph.D., Eric McArthur, M.Sc., Jessica M. Sontrop, Ph.D., John J. Koval, Ph.D., Ngan N. Lam, M.D., Ainslie M. Hildebrand, M.D., Peter P. Reese, M.D., Leroy Storsley, M.D., John S. Gill, M.D., Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., Steven Habbous, M.Sc., Ann Bugeja, M.D., Greg A. Knoll, M.D., Christine Dipchand, M.D., Mauricio Monroy-Cuadros, M.D., and Krista L. Lentine, M.D., Ph.D., for the DONOR Network

N Engl J Med 2015; 372:124-133January 8, 2015DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1408932

BACKGROUND

Young women wishing to become living kidney donors frequently ask whether nephrectomy will affect their future pregnancies.

METHODS

We conducted a retrospective cohort study of living kidney donors involving 85 women (131 pregnancies after cohort entry) who were matched in a 1:6 ratio with 510 healthy nondonors from the general population (788 pregnancies after cohort entry). Kidney donations occurred between 1992 and 2009 in Ontario, Canada, with follow-up through linked health care databases until March 2013. Donors and nondonors were matched with respect to age, year of cohort entry, residency (urban or rural), income, number of pregnancies before cohort entry, and the time to the first pregnancy after cohort entry. The primary outcome was a hospital diagnosis of gestational hypertension or preeclampsia. Secondary outcomes were each component of the primary outcome examined separately and other maternal and fetal outcomes.

RESULTS

Gestational hypertension or preeclampsia was more common among living kidney donors than among nondonors (occurring in 15 of 131 pregnancies [11%] vs. 38 of 788 pregnancies [5%]; odds ratio for donors, 2.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.2 to 5.0; P=0.01). Each component of the primary outcome was also more common among donors (odds ratio, 2.5 for gestational hypertension and 2.4 for preeclampsia). There were no significant differences between donors and nondonors with respect to rates of preterm birth (8% and 7%, respectively) or low birth weight (6% and 4%, respectively). There were no reports of maternal death, stillbirth, or neonatal death among the donors. Most women had uncomplicated pregnancies after donation.

CONCLUSIONS

Gestational hypertension or preeclampsia was more likely to be diagnosed in kidney donors than in matched nondonors with similar indicators of baseline health. (Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and others.)

That is what you will learn to write. Please read it over and over again until you can understand each word.

Let us call it a day. We will learn more abstracts in the next class.