Epidemiology in Medical Practise
İÇİNDEKİLERContents Preface Section 1. Description of disease in the community 1. Community diagnosis National problems; regional problems; time trends; high-risk groups; defining priorities. 2. Sources of information: Routine statistics Population statistics; mortality statistics (general and occupational); morbidity statistics (hospital, general practice, notifications, registers, social security and other sources); record linkage. References to available sources. 3. Sources of information: Surveys Case definition; quality control (repeatability, validity); types of survey (simple descriptive surveys, cross-sectional and longitudinal population surveys). 4. Methods of description Numbers and rates; prevalence and incidence; geographical distributions (including age/sex standardisation of rates); distributions in time (secular and cyclic trends); the characteristics of individuals (age, sex, socio-economic status, occupation). Section 2. Prevention of disease 5. Aetiology Descriptive studies (geographical, temporal and age distributions); analytic studies (case-control and cohort studies, selection of controls, interpretation of data, correlation, significance tests, interactions of causes). 6. Evaluation of preventive measures Need for objective evidence of effectiveness (examples of unsubstantiated measures); observational studies, with and without control groups; experimental studies; trials to test aetiological hypotheses. Section 3. Epidemiology and patient care 7. Natural history and prognosis Limitations of clinical experience (case selection and incomplete follow-up); the clinical follow-up study (case definition and ascertainment, pilot study, record design, follow-up); methods of describing prognosis (case fatality rate, survival rates, life-table analysis); record linkage; the precusor and preclinical phases of diseases. 8. Screening Screening in clinical practice; mass screening surveys; assessment of screening test (repeatability, validity); evaluation of screening service (costs, yield). 9. Epidemics Infectious disease epidemics; modern epidemics; new diseases; investigation (verification of diagnosis, confirmation of epidemic, characterisation of cases, investigation of population at risk, formulation of hypothesis); management of epidemics (treatment of cases, control measures, surveillance). 10. Epidemiology in the evaluation of medical services Measurement of outcome; cost; efficiency; observational studies; experimental studies. Appendix: Rates Further reading Index  |
