Epidemiology of lung disease

Question 1

What is epidemiology?

Answer 1

The study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why

Question 2

How can epidemiology be used?

Answer 2

To plan and evaluate strategies to prevent/ameliorate illness

Question 3

What is incidence?

Answer 3

The rate at which new cases occur in a population during a specified time period
e.g. number of new cases per 1000 PER YEAR

Question 4

What is prevalence?

Answer 4

Proportion of a pollution that have a disease at a point in time

Question 5

What type of conditions is prevalence best for?

Answer 5

stable ones, NOT acute ones

Question 6

How do improvements in care affect prevalence?

Answer 6

Prevalence increases as death rate is lower, so more people are living with the disease at any one time

Question 7

Define mortality

Answer 7

Incidence of death from a disease, measured in no. per amount of people per year

Question 8

What are the advantages of ecological studies?

Answer 8

Cheap
easy to perform
data readily available

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of ecological studies?

Answer 9

Subject to bias and ecological fallacy

Question 10

Is case control retrospective or prospective?

Answer 10

retrospective

Question 11

What does a cross sectional study measure and why?

Answer 11

Prevalence - the study is done at one moment in time and people with the disease and with the disease are compared to see whether certain factors are present or absent in the disease or non-disease group

Question 12

What does a cohort study measure and why?

Answer 12

incidence - follows one group that has been exposed and another group that hasn’t’ been exposed over time to find out who develops the disease

Question 13

Give an example of a type of intervention study design

Answer 13

RCT

Question 14

What two diseases make up COPD?

Answer 14

Emphysema and chronic bronchitis

Question 15

How do we define chronic bronchitis?

Answer 15

cough with sputum for 3 months for 2 or more consecutive years

Question 16

What is the FEV1/FVC for COPD?

Answer 16

<70%

Question 17

What is a bed day?

Answer 17

a day during which a person is confined to a bed and in which the patient stays overnight in a hospital

Question 18

What is the main cause of COPD

Answer 18

smoking

Question 19

What famous study was done on smoking in the UK from 1951-2001 and who did it and what did they find?

Answer 19

British Doctors Study done by Doll and Bradford Hill
done on nearly 35,000 male doctors and found the smokers die 10 years early in a dose response fashion, so a prospective study

Question 20

What proportion of COPD is caused by work?

Answer 20

15%

Question 21

Give examples of causes of COPD in the workplace

Answer 21

coal dust
silica
cotton
grain
cadmium
isocyanates 
welders
joiners
construction workers

Question 22

Give one genetic cause of COPD

Answer 22

alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency

Question 23

Give examples of environmental causes of COPD

Answer 23

tobacco smoke

air pollution

Question 24

Give reasons for geographical variations in COPD

Answer 24

socio-economic
housing and nutrition
historic industry (e.g. coal mining)
increasing smoking prevalence

Question 25

Give three causes of lung cancer

Answer 25

smoking
environmental
occupation

Question 26

Overall has smoking gone up or down over the past few decades?

Answer 26

down

Question 27

Do men or women smoke more?

Answer 27

men

Question 28

What to serious diseases are caused by smoking?

Answer 28

COPD and lung cancer

Question 29

What does prevalence equal?

Answer 29

prevalence = incidence rate x average duration of disease