Purpose: Comment the Discussion

To Comment

Epidemiology is the study of occurrence of disease in human populations which provides guidelines for providing care. Clinical epidemiology attempts to predict the human response by studying disease outcomes (Death, Disease, Discomfort, Disability, and Dissatisfaction) in similar population groups.

Evidence-based medicine derives from employing clinical epidemiology to the care of patients (Fletcher, et. al., 2014). This is based on current best evidence garnered not only from basic scientific research, but from clinical studies as well (Hyun, 2016).

There are those who argue that even though evidence-based medicine succeeds in formulating predictive factors of populations, it fails to adequately address the individual patient with his/her own distinct biological and biographical traits (Horwitz & Singer, 2017).

Types of data yielded from epidemiology are nominal which places data in categories. Examples include yes/no questions on an initial admission assessment such as travel history or tobacco usage. Ordinal data places the item being measured in a numerical order such as pain assessments. Interval data comes from a specific order, example would be vitals taken every 5 minutes for 20 minutes during blood transfusion.

Reviewing the National Center for Health Statistics, I found that 12.1% of adults were diagnosed with sinusitis. It is more likely to occur in white (non-Hispanic) females aged 65 - 74 (CDC, 2015).