Authors should remain on the lookout for opportunities to establish their expertise and create an impact within their area of professional interest. One way to get a significant payoff from a relatively small effort is to write a clinical update article.
What is a Clinical Update Article?
Clinical update articles are short, focused review articles that can have a huge impact by improving how clinicians practice medicine. While they focus on a specific clinical disorder or medical topic, clinical update articles do not provide a comprehensive review or a “deep dive” of that topic. Instead, they tend to cover the most recent advances in knowledge to keep clinicians abreast of changes in their field. By delivering timely information in an efficient manner, these articles can improve the medical care of patients around the world.
Examples of Clinical Update Articles
Clinical update articles are published in a variety of clinically-focused journals. For example, this update on multiple sclerosis treatment was published in JAAPA. This article published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation summarized the international guidelines and recent systematic reviews of the treatment of H. pylori infection. This article provided an updated on treating anemia in chronic kidney disease and gave the information a unique slant by targeting an audience of clinical pharmacists (and publishing it in a pharmacist-relevant journal). This update on leishmaniasis was published in Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases. This update doesn’t address a disease, but tackles the topic of “antiemetic drugs” in a Nature spinoff journal (a very high impact family of journals!).
Finding Topic Ideas for Clinical Update Articles
Luckily, there is an easy shortcut to brainstorming clinical update article ideas. I recommend authors keep an eye out for changes to large societal guidelines pertaining to the management of clinical disorders or preventive healthcare. Updates to guidelines typically occur when there are significant advances in medical knowledge or practice–exactly the type of changes that might warrant a clinical update article.
However, we need to avoid some confusion. Large specialty societies and other authoritative organizations will often publish their guidelines and recommendations as academic articles. For example, the International Society of Hypertension published its 2020 Global Hypertension Guidelines in the journal Hypertension in this article. But this is a dense article that might not reach everyone who needs to know about this information. It might also lack entry-level context or other information that makes it easy for busy clinicians to digest and apply to their practice. Additional articles can aid in disseminating the information.
Different authors might take a societal guideline update and use it to write a clinical update article which can be published in a separate academic journal. For example, the organization Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) published their recommendations on managing diabetes in chronic kidney disease in Kidney International. Unfortunately, most internal medicine clinicians will not read Kidney International and may not hear about these guideline updates in a timely manner. To spread this important information to more people, a group of authors published a summary of the guidelines in Annals of Internal Medicine, a widely read internal medicine-focused journal. This article did not provide new data but instead packaged the guidelines along with appropriate background information in a digestible manuscript.
14 Recently Updated Guidelines You Could Use to Write a Clinical Update Article:
If you want to write a clinical update article, stay alert for new guidelines on important clinical topics or other game-changing research, especially in your field of interest. Publishing an update article is an easy way to display your expertise in a subject matter area.
New guidelines are easy to find (especially when I do the work for you ☺︎ ). Here are some topics that have recently had new guidelines released by authoritative organizations:
2025 ACC/AHA/ACEP/NAEMSP/SCAI Guideline for the Management of Patients With Acute Coronary Syndromes
Blood Culture–Negative Endocarditis: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association
Beverage Consumption Recommendations for School-Aged Children and Adolescents
2025 ACC/AHA/ACEP/NAEMSP/SCAI Guideline for the Management of Patients With Acute Coronary Syndromes
Microhematuria: AUA/SUFU Guideline (2025)
ACG Clinical Guideline: Diagnosis and Management of Eosinophilic Esophagitis
If you need help writing the article, start by reading examples of already-published update articles. In the future, I plan to produce a step-by-step guide to writing these articles but you do not need to wait for that. Once you find the right topic, they practically write themselves.
If you need help brainstorming ideas for future articles, this free guide can help:
