The Use Of Data Flashcards
(54 cards)
What % of people consult their GP about their health concerns?
20%
What % of people who consult their GP are passed on to secondary care/ get an Ix done?
3%
What’s the difference between diagnosis, disease and illness?
Disease=symptoms
Diagnosis=signs
Illness=ICE and experience
The medical and non-medical factors affecting the uptake of care
Medical: New symptoms Visible symptoms Increasing severity Duration
Non-medical: Crisis Peer pressure Patient beliefs Expectations Social class Economic Psychological Environmental Cultural Ethnic Age Gender Media
What’re the 3 main aims of epidemiology?
Description
-to describe the amount and distribution of disease in human population
Explanation
To elucidate the natural history and identify aeitological features for the disease
Disease control
To provide the basis one which preventive measures, public health practices and therapeutic strategies can be used
What differences in groups can epidemiology point out?
Aetiological clues (what causes the problem)
The scope for prevention
The identification of high risk or priority groups in society
How may the study group be defined?
Age/sex/location
Who does clinical medicine deal with?
The individual patient
What does epidemiology deal with?
Populations
What’s the ratio to do with disease and risk?
Events/population at risk
The risk part is crucial. It means that 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
Incidence vs prevalence
Incidence=the number of new cases of a disease in a population in a specified period of time
Prevalence=is the number of people with a specific disease at a single point in time or a defined period of time
What is the relative risk and the ratio to work it out?
A measure of the strength of an association between a suspected RF and disease under study
RR=incidence in an exposed group/incidence of disease in an unexposed group
Sources of epidemiological data
Mortality data Hospital and clinical activity statistics Reproductive health statistics Infectious disease stats Cancer stats Accident stats GP morbidity stats Health and household stats Drug misuse databases
What is health literacy?
It is about 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 system
What’s the CHA2DS2-VASc score used for?
Estimating the risk of stroke in patients with non-rheumatic AF
What’re NAOCs and why do they appeal to patients?
Novel anticoagulants
Newer drugs that don’t require regular blood tests like warfarin
Downside of NOACs?
Not easily reversed like warfarin is (with vit K) in the event of bleeding
Relatively expensive
HAS-BLED score is used for what?
The risks of bleeding for patients on anticoagulants
What’re the 6 steps in making SIGN guidelines?
1) identify questions
2) search for evidence
3) look at the evidence
4) make judgements and recommendations
5) publish the guidelines
6) advertise guidelines
What’re descriptive studies?
The describe the amount and distribution of a disease in a given population
May look at the disease alone or examine one or more factors (exposures) thought to be linked to the aetiology
Doesn’t provide definite conclusions about disease causation but gives clues to possible risk factors and candidate aetiologies
Follow the time, place, person framework
What are are descriptive epidemiological studies useful in?
Identifying emerging public health patterns
Signalling the presence of effects worthy of further investigation
Assessing the effectiveness of prevention and control measures
Assessing the needs for health services and service planning
Generating hypotheses about disease aetiology
Do descriptive epidemiological studies test hypotheses?
No
What’re cross sectional studies
Observations are made at a single point in time
Conclusions are drawn about the relationship between diseases and other variables of interest in a defined population
One positive and one negative about cross sectional studies
Provides results quickly
Impossible to infer causation
