Epidemiology Is the only Way of Asking Some Questions in Medicine.

Epidemiology is the only way of asking some questions in medicine. My view on epidemiology has changed a lot since the beginning of the course. I always viewed it as a subject that is important to learn about how a disease brings about changes in the community, but every chapter that I studied revealed a more different meaning to epidemiology.

In day to day practice the amount of dose that is specified for a child and adult all depend on a previous study conducted for the disease. Randomized controlled trials help us in finding the answers. It will help in testing the efficacy of a new drug and this will impact on the already in use drug. So different studies come up every day and as a physician we must keep ourselves up to date about them.

Community health and diagnosis are two important aspects of epidemiology. Historical studies conducted on the health of a community and of the various occurrences of diseases in that area will also help in predicting and projecting in disease prevalence in the future also. Incidence, prevalence, mortality rates help in diagnosis of the presence, the nature and the distribution of infectious as well as non-infectious diseases in the population keeping in mind the various changes in the society and health of the population.

The chance of an individual and a population being at risk of acquiring a disease can be estimated using epidemiological risk indicators. To get an estimate about the amount of association between an exposure and the chance of developing a disease relative and absolute measures of risk measurement is required. Epidemiological Studies conducted help us get a clearer clinical picture by including different cases and cohorts and relating clinical disease to the subclinical signs and symptoms. I now know that we can not only conduct studies from a population group but also can get a comparison on an international level. We can search for causes of health and disease, starting with the discovery of groups with high and low rates, studying these differences in relation to differences in ways of living; and, where possible, testing these notions in the actual practice among populations.