Chapter 4: The occurrence of disease: Mortality and other measures of disease impact Flashcards
Mortality
the epidemiologic and vital statistics term for death. (Number of deaths)
What are the three things that causes deaths?:
1- degeneration of vital organs and related conditions
2- Disease states
3- Society or the environment (homicide, accidents, disasters)
Why are death certificates important in public health?
Helpful for epidemiology surveillance.
What are mortality rates?
Tells us about disease-specific death occurrence within a defined population.
What are the most commonly used measures in epidemiology?
Mortality rates
What is the formula for mortality rates?
deaths reported over a given time period/ the total population in which the deaths occurred during the same time period.
What is case-fatality rate?
The proportion of persons with a particular condition (cases) who die from that condition.
What is the formula for case-fatality rate?
the number of case-specific deaths among those cases/ the number of incident cases
what is proportionate mortality?
Used to calculate the proportion of deaths that can be attributed to a specific cause.
What is the formula for proportionate mortality?
Number of deaths from a specific cause during a specified time period/number of deaths in the same time period
What are Years of Potential Life Lost?
is a measure that recognizes that death occurring in a person at younger age involves a greater loss of future productive years than a death occurring at an old age.
How is Years of Potential Life Lost calculated?
by subtracting a person’s age at death from the avg age of death
Age-adjusted
used to compare risks for two or more populations at one point in time or for one population at two or more points in time.
Should age adjusted rates be viewed as relative indexes rather than actual measures of risk true or false
True
Direct adjustment
A standard population is used to eliminate the effects of differences in age between two populations.
