The dr.

took the first 20 minutes to talk about the course and discussed the course outline, conclusion: 1-The course belongs to the department of preventive dentistry, so if there are any complaints or speak to the chairman of the department regarding any issue to this course. 2- Dr. Ashraf will be free on Tuesday from 1:00 3:00 pm and Thursday full day he comes to the university at 10:00 and remains till 4:00. 3-The course outline will be provided on eLearning. 4-We will have 15 lectures, only 2 unexcused absences are allowed during the semester. 5-The midterm exam will be on the 8th of November, 30% of the total mark, and the final exam to be announced later at the end of the semester having 60% of the total mark, the remaining 10% are participation and quizzes. 6-The form of the quizzes in this course are going to be online, on the elearning website. He will set a date and a time of an exam. The quiz is an open book quiz, and it will be after the midterm exam. There will be 1-2 quizzes. 7- There are two text books: Clinical epidemiology is the main book and covers most of the topics, the other is Study design and statistical analysis this book is related to the first three topics. 8-The course outline contains the weight of each topic, in other words the amount of questions related to this topic. The first lecture starts with the topic of Basic principles of research designs: When we talk about research we can divide the field of medicine and dentistry into different categories for the sake of research, so we have biological sciences,

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clinical sciences, population sciences, and health services. So these are the four main categories that we do research in. Example: if I want to study the biology of a disease then this related to biological sciences, as we study how the disease works or what are the factors that cause the disease (etiology) or the pathology of the disease and so on. We have clinical sciences which are information related to the care of individual patients. We want to study a disease but at the same time we want to study the patients by collecting information from those patients. And anything related to that is categorized under clinical sciences because we see patients. We have population sciences: when I do a research on a certain population. Example is the research Dr. Ashraf did on the timing of tooth development and eruption on Jordanian people; he saw many school children and those children belong to the population of Jordan, so if we categorize his research it will be under population sciences because it is related to studying a specific population. It is not only studies related to diseases may be it is related to a certain phenomenon, as in Dr. Ashrafs research he didnt study a disease, counted the teeth that have erupted for each child and then he came up with the timing of tooth eruption, he didnt study a disease but the value of this research will be very important for disease studying. And finally we have health services, for example the study of how non-biological factors affect the peoples health. Like studying how the distance of the ambulance from the hospital affects the patients. Or the distance between the patient and the dentist and how it may have an effect on the type of treatment. Now clinical epidemiology which is categorized under the clinical sciences and it is the science of making prediction about individual patients. We have to make a prediction. We will discuss an example and then continue talking about clinical epidemiology. What is the significance of making a research on a certain disease? It is explained by an example: studying the effect of smoking on lung cancer, does smoking lead to lung cancer? So we do a research and by the end of this research we know that
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smoking is cause of lung cancer, and that leads to educational campaigns and make people aware of the risks of smoking to reduce the lung cancer. After we make research and predictions to see what will happen to these patients and then we apply the results on the non-patients because we dont want them to become patients. We do that by counting clinical events of similar patients, in our example we have to count the number of lung cancer patients of chronic smokers, and using strong scientific methods. The method should be strong in order for me to relay on it and say that smoking causes lung cancer, at least I should have 95% of smokers to have a strong evidence, we do that to ensure that the predictions are accurate to come up with a recommendation, every research has its own recommendation talking about the significant points of it, and what it well provide to the health sector, So when the research has no significant, it is not an important research. An example: out of medicine, lets assume that you have factory for making Tshirts, you have to do a research to make a successful trade, and you have to start by taking a sample from the region you are in. You took samples, and the results are: M size = 40% of the population L size = 30% of the population XL size = 10% of the population S size = 15% of the population

So the biggest number goes for M sized T-shirts. Imagine that you didnt do a research, and you made 1/3 of the T-shirts XL, it doesnt match the percentage, they will go waste. So before doing any business, you have to have significant research and data to relay on. Now the purposes of clinical Epidemiology: is to develop and apply methods of clinical observation, you have to observe a clinical event like diseases clinical event is not always a disease, you have to observe it, this will lead to valid conclusions by avoiding being misled ( )by systematic errors, and minimizing
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the role of chance, these are the enemies of any research, and they are important factors. An example of Systematic error: the tool of measuring that disease was invalid, so you will have wrong results. An important point about the role of chance: it shouldnt exceed 5%; limit of chance in any research is 5%. Lets take an example: I want to make a research on this hall, it has 200 students, and I want to conclude that males are taller than females in this hall, to achieve this research, females that are taller than males shouldnt exceed 5%, if we have 15 female that are taller than 15 male, I cant conclude that males in this hall are taller than females, because role of chance is over 5%, so you have to be careful about how you read the chance and interpreting it. We cant avoid the chance by excluding the factor, it is there, but you can understand minimize the role of chance, by increasing the quantity of your sample. Example: I have 10 students, 5 males and 5 females, 1 female is taller than 1 male, so the percentage of chance = 10%, no conclusion; because I have small sample. So the larger the sample, the more accurate your prediction of conclusion. Another purpose of clinical Epidemiology: is to obtain the kind of information clinicians need to make good decisions in the care of patients. Clinical Epidemiology is called so because it answers clinical questions related to the care of patients and guide clinical decisions making. Sometimes we read: evidence based conclusion, its called (evidence based medicine), any conclusion you want to provide it should be evidence based (strong evidence) or your research will be useless. So the application of clinical Epidemiology is for the sake of caring the patient. Basic principles of research: 1. Formulate the clinical questions

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 By identifying the main question of the research, for example: the timing of tooth development among Jordanians.

2. The variables you have For the same example: you must have: ages of people and teeth that erupted. So you have to identify different types of variables 3. The health outcome Main conclusion that will aid health sector 4. Dealing with numbers and probabilities In research we always deal with numbers and probabilities. We use Quantitative for numbers. We use Qualitative for probabilities.

DONE BY: ABDULLAH WADDAH KHALID MORTAJA

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