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Flashcards in The Use of Data Deck (71)
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1
Q

What is general practice?

A

The interface between the public and the medical profession on one hand, and primary and secondary care on the other hand

2
Q

What is the difference between disease and illness?

A
Disease = symptoms, signs, diagnosis, biomedical perspective
Illness = ideas, concerns, expectations, experience of disease
3
Q

What factors affect the uptake of care?

A

Concept of lay referral
Sources of info: peers, family, internet, TV, newspaper, magazines, practice leaflets or website
Medical factors: new symptoms, visible symptoms, increasing severity, duration
Non-medical factors: crisis, peer pressure, ‘wife sent me’, patient beliefs, expectations, social class, economic, physiological, environmental, cultural, ethnic, age, gender, media

4
Q

How does age/gender affect uptake of care?

A

Age:
Young children more likely
Then drops and steadily increases with age
Gender:
Females more likely to receive care than men

5
Q

What are the investigations for AF?

A

ECG
U+Es
TFTs
FBC

6
Q

Diagnose a 66yo male with AF, what are some issues from the patients point of view?

A

Believes himself to be healthy
Is physically fit
Proud not to be using tablets
Both he and his wife associate all illnesses to do with the heart with IHD

7
Q

Diagnose a 66yo male with AF, what are some issues from the GPs point of view?

A

Wish to perform a couple more tests - Holter monitor and echocardiogram
If confirm AF, worried about the consequences for patient’s long-term health

8
Q

Diagnose a 66yo male with AF, what are some topics that might come up in a consultation?

A

What would you like to cover in this consultation?
Issues that GP brings up
Issues that the patient brings up

9
Q

In detail, what are the three main aims of epidemiology?

A

Description: to describe the amount and distribution of disease in human populations
Explanation: to explain the natural history and identify aetiological factors for disease usually by combining epidemiological data with data from other disciplines
Disease control: provide the basis on which preventative measures, public health practices and therapeutic strategies can be developed, implemented, monitored and evaluated for the purposes of disease control

10
Q

Overall, what are the three main aims of epidemiology?

A

Description
Explanation
Disease control

11
Q

Epidemiology compares groups in order to detect differences pointing to what?

A

Aetiological clues (what causes the problem)
Scope for prevention
Identification of high risk or priority groups in society

12
Q

What is the difference between clinical medicine and epidemiology?

A

Clinical medicine = individual patient

Epidemiology = populations

13
Q

What is the ratio used when talking about people at risk?

A
Numerator = events
Denominator = population at risk
14
Q

Why is the at risk part important for events/population at risk ratio?

A

Everyone in the denominator must have the possibility of entering the numerator, and conversely those people in the numerator must have come from the denominator population

15
Q

What is incidence?

A

The number of new cases in a disease in a population in a specified period of time

16
Q

What is prevalence?

A

The number of people in a population with a specific disease at a single point in time or in a defined period of time

17
Q

What is an example of an illness which could have a high incidence but a low prevalence?

A

A cold

18
Q

What is an example of an illness which could have a low incidence but a high prevalence?

A

Diabetes

19
Q

What is relative risk?

A

A measure of the strength of an association between a suspected risk factor and the disease under study

20
Q

What is the equation for relative risk (RR)?

A

RR = incidence of disease in exposed group/incidence of disease in unexposed group

21
Q

What are some sources of epidemiological data?

A
Mortality data
Hospital activity statistics
Reproductive health statistics
Cancer statistics
Accident statistics
General practice morbidity
Health and household surveys
Social security stats
Drug misuse databases
Expenditure data from NHS
22
Q

What is health literacy?

A

People having the knowledge, skills, understanding and confidence to use health information, to be active partners in their care, and to navigate health and social care systems

23
Q

How has the Scottish Government tried to help health literacy?

A

Making it Easy - A healthy literacy action plan for Scotland

24
Q

What is the CHA2DS2-VASc score?

A

Clinical prediction rules for estimating the risk of stroke in patients with non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation (AF)

25
Q

What does the CHA2DS2-VASc score use to determine the risk of stroke?

A
Age
Sex
CHF history
Hypertension history
Stroke/TIA/thromboemolism history
Vascular disease history
Diabetes history
26
Q

What are NOAC’s?

A

New oral anticoagulants

27
Q

What are the advantages of NOACs?

A

Do not require regular blood test monitoring like Warfarin

28
Q

What are the disadvantages of NOACs?

A

Relatively expensive

Not easily reversed like Warfarin

29
Q

What reverses Warfarin?

A

Vitamin K

30
Q

What is the scoring system for estimating the risk of major bleeding?

A

HAS-BLED

31
Q

What are SIGN guidelines?

A

Guidelines based on systematic review of scientific literature and are aiming at aiding the translation of new knowledge into action

32
Q

What are the SIGN guidelines intended to do?

A

Help health and care professionals and patients understand medical evidence and use it to make decisions about healthcare
Reduce unwarranted variations in practice and make sure patients get the best care available
Improve healthcare across Scotland by focussing on patient-important outcomes

33
Q

What are different types of studies?

A

Descriptive studies
Cross-sectional studies
Case control studies
Cohort studies

34
Q

What are descriptive studies?

A

They attempt to describe the amount and distribution of a disease in a given population
Does not provide definitive conclusions about disease causation but may give clues to possible risk factors and candidate aetiologies
Cheap, quick, give valuable initial overview of problem

35
Q

What is a cross-sectional study?

A

Observations made at single point in time looking at disease frequency, survey, prevalence study

36
Q

What is a case control study?

A

Two groups of people are compared:
A group of individuals who have the disease of interest are identified (cases)
A group of individuals who do not have the disease (controls)
Look at previous exposures to potentially identify risk factors and compare

37
Q

What are cohort studies?

A

Baseline data on exposure are collected from a group of people who do not have the disease under study
Group is then followed through time until a sufficient number have developed the disease to allow analysis
Can compare expose and not exposed/diseased and not diseased

38
Q

What are trials?

A

Experiments used to test ideas about aetiology or to evaluate interventions

39
Q

Which type of trial is the definitive method of assessing any new treatment in medicine?

A

Randomised controlled trial

40
Q

How does the trial of a new treatment work?

A

Intervention group receive new treatment, the control group receive a placebo or current standard therapy and the treatment outcomes are compared in the two groups

41
Q

How does a trial involving disease work?

A

Two groups at risk of developing a disease: a study group and control group
An alteration is made to intervention group (suspected causative factor removed or neutralised) whilst no alteration is made to control group
Aim is to determine whether modification of factor alters the incidence of the disease

42
Q

What are factors to consider when interpreting results from trials?

A
Standardisation
Standardised mortality ratio
Quality of data
Case definition
Coding and classification
Ascertainment
43
Q

What is standardisation?

A

Set of techniques used to remove the effects of differences in confounding variables, when comparing two or more populations

44
Q

What is standardised mortality ratio?

A

A standardisation death rate converted into a ratio for easy comparison
A figure below 100 means fewer than expected deaths, and above 100 means more

45
Q

What does quality of data mean?

A

Is the data trustworthy?

46
Q

What is case definition?

A

Whether an individual has the condition of interest or not

47
Q

What is coding and classification?

A

When data is being collected routinely, it is normal to convert disease info to a set of codes to assist in data storage and analysis

48
Q

What is ascertainment?

A

Is the data complete - are any subjects missing? Higher incidence rates in countries that look harder for cases of a given disease.

49
Q

What is bias?

A

Any trend in the collection, analysis, interpretation, publication or review of data that can lead to conclusions that are systematically different from the truth

50
Q

What are different types of bias?

A

Selection bias
Information bias
Follow up bias
Systematic error

51
Q

What is selection bias?

A

When the study sample is not truly representative of the whole study population

52
Q

What is information bias?

A

Arises from systematic errors in measuring exposure or disease

53
Q

What is follow up bias?

A

Arises when one group of subjects is followed up more than another to measure disease incidence or other relevant outcome

54
Q

What is systematic error?

A

There is a tendency for measurements to always fall on one side of the true value e.g. instrument calibrated wrongly/user error

55
Q

What is a confounding factor?

A

One which is associated independently with both the disease and with the exposure under investigation and so distorts the relationship between the exposure and disease

56
Q

What is consistency?

A

Repeated observation of an association in different populations under different circumstances

57
Q

What is specificity?

A

A single exposure leading to a single disease

58
Q

What is temporality?

A

The exposure comes before the disease

59
Q

What is a biological gradient?

A

Dose-response relationship

As the exposure increases so does the risk of disease

60
Q

What is biological plausibility?

A

The association agrees with what is known about the biology of the disease

61
Q

What is coherence?

A

The association does not conflict with what is known about the biology of the disease

62
Q

What is analogy?

A

Another exposure-disease relationship exists what can act as a model for the one under investigation

63
Q

What are the criteria for causality?

A
Strength of association
Consistency
Specificity
Temporality
Biological gradient
Biological plausability
Coherence
Analogy
Experiment
64
Q

What is the only absolute criterion for causality?

A

Temporality

65
Q

What could you discuss with a patient after a differential diagnosis?

A

Use of QOF data to illustrate relevance and practice of epidemiology
SIGN guidelines/NICE/local
Study design
Screening programmes

66
Q

You are a GP and want to know if your practise is doing it’s best for patients with a condition (AUDIT).
What questions would you ask?

A

What do you want to assess?
How could you do this?
How would you compare your figures with neighbouring practices?
How would you compare your figures with regional and national figures?
List possible suggestions for disparities between figures

67
Q

You are on GP placement, you want to ensure that these antiviral treatments are being prescribed appropriately. You decide to do an audit. You need to set criteria and standards, how would you do this?

A

Could define own: time consuming/needs more research

Could utilise others if available: guidelines based on systematic review of evidence e.g. NICE guidelines

68
Q

What does NICE provide for doing audits?

A

Produce audit toolkits for their guidelines with criteria and standards defined

69
Q

What is an audit?

A

A process used by health professionals to assess, evaluate and improve care of patients in a systematic way
Audit measures current practice against a defined/desired standard

70
Q

What are the stages in the audit cycle?

A
Stage 1 - preparation
Stage 2 - select criteria
Stage 3 - measuring level of performance
Stage 4 - making improvements
Stage 5 - maintaining improvements
71
Q

What could be limitations of an audit?

A

Misses patients who should have received drug but didn’t