NR 503 Midterm - Answered with complete solutions Descriptive Epidemiology Natural History of Disease defines differences, similarities, and correlation
... [Show More] keys of any health problems Time and place Learns extent and pattern of the public health problem being investigated Detailed description of the health of a population by using tables, graphs and maps Can identify areas or groups within the population that have high rates of disease and creates clues for the disease with hypotheses Causation cause of the disease or issue process An increase in a casual factor or exposure causes an increase in the outcome of disease Primary: use of flu vaccinations Secondary: Test for influenza Tertiary: giving Tamiflu to a positive flu patient Active Surveillance Case by case basis Each specific person's information is entered into a database. Passive Surveillance Where the information is pulled from the database Cohort study identifies a group exposed to a particular factor AND a comparison group not exposed AND measures/compares the incidence of disease to the two groups Great for outbreaks in small populations Used when looking for multiple outcomes observational, not reliable, measured over time
Case-control study comparing groups with and without the disease compared with past exposures that are RARE if high odds of exposure then this is an ASSOCIATION Large populations AND when disease outcome is uncommon less reliable, inexpensive, easy to conduct, works well with outbreaks too many confounding variables which alter results ex: link between lung cancer to smoking When does bias become a problem? When it is not representative of the entire population RCT vs. Case-control clinical trials RCT: carefully planned, introduces a treatment, reduces bias, comparison between intervention groups and control groups, provides evidence of cause and effect CASE-CONTROL: comparing those with and without the condition, use data collection or patient recall, less reliable Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) Experiments that introduce a treatment to study its effects on real people. less bias (randomizing and bias) comparison between intervention groups & control groups are randomly selected Planned AND provides sound evidence of cause & effect GOLD STANDARD Cross-sectional study Describe a relationship between disease AND other factors at one point in time in a defined population No comparison group Lack of info on timing of exposure AND outcome relationships AND include prevalent cases Compare diagnostic tests called PROSPECTIVE, BLIND COMPARISON to the gold standard Varying degrees [Show Less]