Abstracts will be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Significance of the hypothesis
• Valid conclusion(s)
• Argument clarity
• Presentation quality

Case studies must include novel findings, such as the following:

• A new disease or condition (i.e. not previously reported).
• A distinctive or unusual presentation of a known disease, with one or more well-documented new findings of special clinical relevance (i.e., potentially applicable to diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, etc.) or that serves to provide new insight into the possible pathogenesis of a disease (hypothesis-generating). The new information might be derived from distinctive morphology and/or ancillary testing.
• A known disease with a demonstrated new finding using state-of-the-art techniques (immunohistochemical, molecular, 3-dimensional reconstruction, cytogenetics, etc.) relevant to a clearly stated hypothesis.
• A known disease presenting with a previously undescribed clinically or etiologically relevant association (i.e., a myelodysplastic syndrome associated with a plasma cell dyscrasia, etc.) in order to heighten awareness of a possible link between entities. Such a link might have been described before in one or more individual case reports, and the addition of a case might help solidify a real association.