Epidemiology and Classification of Diseases

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES
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Epidemiology and Classification of Diseases
Epidemiology is one of the fundamental aspects of a hospital setting that focuses on studying diseases among different groups. Hospitals utilize epidemiological data in planning and evaluating strategies for preventing illnesses. Besides, they use such information as a guide to managing patients through which an infection has developed. One of the critical features of epidemiology entails measuring the outcome of illness concerning a population at risk. Notably, the people at risk are groups on the list if they had the studied disease. Descriptive epidemiology can help identify the pattern of disease cases in various populations and the factors that increase the risk of an illness. Therefore, epidemiologists play a relevant role in utilizing descriptive epidemiology in generating hypotheses about an infection in the population. Besides, the professionals use analytic epidemiology in quantifying the relationship between outcome and exposure of illnesses before they test ideas about causal relationships. In such a case, they have sufficient evidence on implementing prevention and control measures.
Measures of Disease Frequency
Incidence rates and prevalence proportions of related symptoms in the general population are the leading indicators of health levels of the people. Such epidemiological measures are the primary foundations to monitor illnesses and evaluate healthcare policy in our hospital. Clinicians compare incidence rates and proportion of prevalence to acquire enhanced knowledge on aetiology and prevention of diseases. However, hospitals encounter difficulty reaching data sources based on various numerators and denominators (Wakap et al., 2020). According to the findings in epidemiological books, the definition of prevalence proportions and incidence rates are ambiguous. Incidence rate entails the frequency of new occurrences of medical disorders in the population at risk of an illness in a specific period. However, one of the challenging exercises in most hospitals is to compare prevalence proportions and incidence rates.
Incidence is an effective measure of the frequency of illness based on the overall rate at which new disease cases occur in a population setting. For a population at risk, the incidence is the overall number of new possibilities. In some instances, incidence measurement is complicated, resulting from population changes when new issues of an illness are ascertained, especially during births, deaths, or even migrations. One of the critical strategies for overcoming the challenge is relating the number of new cases to the person’s age at risk of infection (Wakap et al., 2020). The calculation involves adding the periods at which each population member is at risk during an assessment period. If an individual is classified as a case, he is not liable to become an emerging case. In some instances, a pathological event can happen more than once to the same person. For example, in the course of the research, a patient can have various episodes of myocardial infarction. In such a circumstance, the definition of incidence is restricted to only one event. However, it would be more appropriate to consider all the episodes of an illness. If any form of ambiguity occurs, reports should indicate whether an incidence refers to only a single diagnosis or all episodes.
Prevalence is an equally relevant measure of the frequency of an illness as the proportion of the population affected by a disease. One of the prevailing illnesses in our hospital is persistent wheeze, especially among primary school children. Notably, prevalence is an appropriate measure, especially for stable conditions. However, it is inappropriate for various forms of acute disorders. Similarly, the manifestations of illnesses are intermittent for chronic diseases. Based on the assessment, prevalence fails to account for the total frequency of a condition. The period of prevalence is a better measure following continuous evaluation of the same groups.
Besides, mortality is a standard measure of the overall frequency of an illness across various population groups. It is the incidence of deaths resulting from the occurrence of multiple diseases within a population. Every case of incident enters a prevalence pool until a patient recovers or succumbs to death. In aetiology studies, the incidence is an ideal measure of the frequency of an illness. Mortality is an appropriate proxy for disease incidence because survival has no relation to risk factors under investigation. However, mortality patterns can be misleading in cases that survival is variable. For example, over the years, a decline in mortality resulting from cancer is attributable to enhanced healthcare without reflecting on fall of incidence. Prevalence can be an alternative to the incidence in the research of rarer chronic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, which would make it challenging to accumulate increased numbers of incident cases. Notably, variation in prevalence in various parts of the world results from differences in survival and recovery among patients.
Furthermore, crude and specific rates are effective measures of the frequency of illnesses across various population groups. Crude prevalence, mortality, and incidence relate to overall health results for a population without any form of refinement. Using factors masks a complex pattern of trends based on declining mortality among the youths. Incidence and prevalence relate to an illness’s onset and presence (Bloom et al., 2017). Therefore, health practitioners utilize the two aspects in making relevant decisions regarding community health and the wellbeing of affected individuals. For instance, in the research process, the professionals can assess the prevalence of smoking in the proportion of smokers. However, the difficulties of defining the population at risk can make it hard to describe a health issue by prevalence and incidence. Although it is easy to determine the population at stake, it cannot be easy to enumerate it. For instance, a cancer registry might gather information about the occupations of registered cancer cases but lack data on the overall number of individuals. A high proportion of prostatic cancer among farmers can result in an increased incidence of chronic illness. Most hospitals prefer to use incidence and prevalence since they can assess them among the affected population.
Social determinants have a significant influence on overall morbidity and mortality rates resulting from prevailing illnesses. In most instances, people from affluent families have a higher chance of implementing strategies of preventing infections than their counterparts from low-economic backgrounds. Similarly, the latter are vulnerable to numerous diseases due to their backgrounds and lack of access to basic social amenities, such as clean water to drink. Thus, the dominance of chronic and infectious illnesses is the leading cause of death across populations from different settings (Excler et al., 2021). Individual clinical diagnosis and health of the general public are vital determinants of clinical diagnoses. According to research findings, micro-organisms, such as tubercle bacillus, are the leading causes of illnesses, such as tuberculosis. However, micro-organisms are common but not the only cause of diseases. Instead, social determinants are the fundamental causes of the manifestation of diseases. For that reason, infections such as cholera and tuberculosis have a common social foundation with chronic illnesses, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Thus, social determinants and economic development are major determining factors to the occurrence of conditions in the general population.
Classification of Diseases
Human health and illnesses are unequally distributed throughout the population in the hospital. However, some adverse health outcomes are more prevalent in some groups than in others. Descriptive epidemiology and descriptive studies generate a hypothesis regarding the frequency of occurrence of illnesses across the population. According to Paoli et al. (2018, p. 2018), race, sex, age, and socioeconomic status are personal variables and determinants of the occurrence of illnesses. According to the hospital’s register, some diseases occurred based on migration, nativity, and religion. For that reason, mortality and morbidity rates vary based on the stage of life. Statistics indicate that infectious illnesses, such as chickenpox and mumps, occur during childhood, especially during childhood (Ramirez et al., 2017). Besides, teenagers are victims of substance abuse, violence, and unintentional injuries. While accidental injuries are the leading cause of death among youths, chronic illnesses, such as cancer, are the significant causes of mortality and morbidity rates among older individuals within the hospital.
Besides, higher rates of diabetes among mothers are likely to increase the risk of complications of pregnancy. Hospital data indicate that the mothers who give birth at old age are more likely to contract diabetes than those who give birth at a younger generation. Equally, assessing a hospital’s records indicates sex variations in many health phenomena, including mortality and morbidity (Paoli et al., 2018). In most instances, males have higher age-specific mort...