Medical statistics

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see Statistics in Medicine (journal).
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Medical statistics deals with applications
of statistics to medicine and the health sciences,
including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine,
and clinical research. Medical statistics has been a recognized
branch of statistics in the United Kingdom for more than 40 years
but the term has not come into general use in North America,
where the wider term 'biostatistics' is more commonly used.
[1]
 However, "biostatistics" more commonly connotes all
applications of statistics to biology.[1] Medical Statistics are a sub
discipline of Statistics. "It is the science of summarizing, collecting,
presenting and interpreting data in medical practice, and using
them to estimate the magnitude of associations and test
hypotheses. It has a central role in medical investigations. It not
only provides a way of organizing information on a wider and more
formal basis than relying on the exchange of anecdotes and
personal experience, but also takes into account the intrinsic
variation inherent in most biological processes." [2]
Contents
  [hide] 

 1Pharmaceutical statistics
 2Basic concepts
 3Related statistical theory
 4See also
 5References
 6Further reading
 7External links

Pharmaceutical statistics[edit]
Pharmaceutical statistics is the application of statistics to
matters concerning the pharmaceutical industry. This can be from
issues of design of experiments, to analysis of drug trials, to
issues of commercialization of a medicine.
There are many professional bodies concerned with this field
including:

 European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical

Industry (EFSPI)
 Statisticians In The Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI)
There are also journals including:

 Statistics in Medicine
 Pharmaceutical Statistics

Basic concepts[edit]
For describing situations

 Incidence (epidemiology) vs. Prevalence vs. Cumulative
incidence
 all types of medical test results can be true positive or false
positive and true negative or false negative...these categories
are hugely dependent on the prevalence of the disease being
tested for; and, for example, a false positive test result is more
likely when the prevalence of the disease being tested for is
very low (such as a lab test for cold-weather influenza being
done in June in South Carolina, USA. and giving a "positive"
result).
 Transmission rate vs. Force of infection
 Mortality rate vs. Standardized mortality ratio vs. Age-
standardized mortality rate
 Pandemic vs. Epidemic vs. Endemic vs. Syndemic
 Serial interval vs. Incubation period
 Cancer cluster
 Sexual network
 Years of potential life lost
 Maternal mortality rate
 Perinatal mortality rate
 Low Birth weight ratio
For assessing the effectiveness of an intervention

 Absolute risk reduction

 Control event rate
 Experimental event rate
 Number needed to harm
 Number needed to treat
 Odds ratio
 Relative risk reduction
 Relative risk
 Relative survival
 Minimal clinically important difference

Related statistical theory[edit]

 Survival analysis
 Proportional hazards models
 Active control trials: Clinical trials in which a kind of new
treatment is compared with some other active agent rather
than a placebo.
 ADLS(Activities of daily living scale): It is a scale designed to
measure physical ability/disability that is used in
investigations of a variety of chronic disabling conditions,
such as arthritis. This scale is based on scoring responses
to questions about self-care, grooming, etc.[3]
 Actuarial statistics: The statistics used by actuaries to
calculate liabilities, evaluate risks and plan the financial
course of insurance, pensions, etc.[4]
See also[edit]

 Herd immunity
 False positives and false negatives
 Rare disease
 Hilda Mary Woods - the first author (with William Russell) of
the first British textbook of medical statistics, published in
1931
References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b Dodge, Y. (2003) The Oxford Dictionary of
Statistical Terms, OUP. ISBN 0-19-850994-4
2. Jump up^ Kirkwood, Betty R. (2003). essential medical
statistics. Blackwell Science, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden,
Massachusetts 02148–5020, USA: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-
86542-871-3.
3. Jump up^ S, KATZ; FORD A B; MOSKOWITZ R W;
JACKSON B A; JAFFE M W (1963). "STUDIES OF ILLNESS IN
THE AGED. THE INDEX OF ADL: A STANDARDIZED
MEASURE OF BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOSOCIAL
FUNCTION". Journal of the American Medical
Association. 185:
914. doi:10.1001/jama.1963.03060120024016.
4. Jump up^ Benjamin, Bernard (1993). The analysis of
mortality and other actuarial statistics. England, Institute of
Actuaries,: Oxford. ISBN 0521077494.

Further reading[edit]

 Altman, D.G. (1991), Practical Statistics for Medical

Research, CRC Press, ISBN 978-0-412-27630-9
 Armitage, P.; Berry, G.; Matthews, J.N.S. (2002), Statistical
Methods in Medical Research, Blackwell, ISBN 978-0-632-
05257-8
 Bland, J. Martin (2000), An Introduction to Medical
Statistics (3rd ed.), Oxford: OUP, ISBN 978-0-19-263269-2
 Kirkwood, B.R.; Sterne, J.A.C. (2003), Essential Medical
Statistics (2nd ed.), Blackwell, ISBN 978-0-86542-871-3
 Petrie, Aviva; Sabin, Caroline (2005), Medical Statistics at a
Glance (2nd ed.), WileyBlackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-2780-6
 Onwude, Joseph (2008), Learn Medical Statistics (2nd ed.),
DesignsOnline.co.uk