All Flashcards
What are the two key aspects of clinical trail purpose
Efficacy = the ability of a health care intervention to
improve the health of a defined group under specific
conditions
Safety=the ability of a health care intervention not toharm a defined group under specific conditions
What is the placebo effect
“Even if the therapy is irrelevant to the
patient’s condition, the patient’s attitude tohis or her illness, and indeed the illness itself, may be improved by a feeling that
something is being done about it”
Define HaDPop
The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting, protecting and improving health through the organised efforts of society
Define consensus and list useful functions
Simultaneous recording of all demographic data to all persons in an area
- allocation of resources
- projections of populations
- trends in population ethnicity or age
Explain the 3 types of birth rate
Crude birth - number of live births per 1000
General fertility rate - number of live births per 1000 fertile women 15-44
Total period fertility - average number of children born to a hypothetical women in her lifetime
Define:
Incidence
Prevalence
Incidence is the number of new cases of a disease per 1000 per year
Prevalence is amount of people who currently have a disease in a set population with no time frame
What is incidence rate ratio
Incidence rates of two separated populations with different exposure levels - these are compared to see if exposure causes disease
A - 300 diagnosed in pop of 30000 over 2 years
B - 400 diagnosed in pop of 60000 over 3 years
(300/(30000X2)) / (400/(60000X3)) = 2.25
So, you are 2.25 times more likely to get disease in area B
Define confounding variable
Something that is associated with both the outcome and the exposure of interest, but is not the casual pathway between the two
Define standardised mortality rate and give the equation
SMR takes into account confounding variables to provide summarise figure describing mortality
Observed number of death / expected number of death X 100
What is variation
Occurs where there is a difference between ‘observed’ and ‘actual’ value
To allow for these, an error factor is produced which is used to calculate confident intervals
What is a confidence interval
A range of values that we can say with confidence, that the actual value will lie in-between this range in 95% of cases.
This is produced by error factors
Define bias and give two umbrella terms
A systematic error that results in an incorrect estimate of true effect on exposure of the outcome.
1) information bias - error due to systematic misclassification of subject
- recall bias
- publication bias
2 selection bias - error due to systematic dif in way groups wr collected
- allocation bias
- healthy worker effect
What is healthy worker effect
Selection bias
Whereby a study involves workers compared to a reference population
A worker is more likely to healthy cf unemployed
Always need to test someone against some else working in same place
List six aspects that are involved in RCT trial
Identify a source of eligible patients Invite eligible patients to trial Allocate to treatment - randomised Follow up participants in identical ways Minimise loses and maximise compliance Analyse data and obtain results
What are the 5 ethical considerations of RCT
Clinical equipoise Scientifically robust Ethical recruitment Valid consent Voluntariness
