Question

what are the uses of relative risk in terms of

a) to the clinician

b) to the researcher

(epidemiology question)

Answer 1

Researcher-relative risk is a risk of probabilities.its the likelihood of an event in relation to all the possible events. hence it compares incidence or risk of an event among those with a specific exposure with those who are not exposed. example, measuring the event of myocardial infarction in patients who smoke and who do not smoke. hence , Relative risk is of major use fro researchers to study prospective cohort studies as here the exposure status of the study participants is already known .fro example, it is probability of one group (e.g. men) thinking an item is a necessity compared with the other group (e.g. women). Thus, a relative risk of 2.0 means twice the risk, a score of 0.5 means half the risk, a score of 3.0 is three times the risk and a score of 0.33 is a third of the risk, etc. A relative risk of 1 would mean that there are no differences between the two groups.

In most epidemiological studies one aims to compare the occurrence of a disease or other health outcome between two groups: a group that is exposed to a certain treatment or risk factor—the exposed group—and a group that is not exposed to this treatment or risk factor, which is called the unexposed or control group. In both of these groups the outcome of interest is measured. Based on the outcomes measured one can calculate for each of the two groups, the risk or the incidence rate of the outcome.

clinician- hence in terms of a clinician, relative risk is of use to decide on to which mode of treatment he should opt for a patient. the clinician can tell the patient also about what line of treatments are available and which one has how much chances of healing . for example, say in case of appendicectomy, a particular drug acts well but has 80% chance of recurrence, whereas surgery at once will give final solution to the problem. then a doctor can can put all these option front of the patient and choose for the best one.

another use is in diagnosis of diseases through established facts done by various studies. example, it is known that smoking causes lung cancer, hence a clinician have a fair idea about patients disease diagnoses if his history of smoking is known.

a clinician can educate and create awareness among his patients regarding ill effects or non competency of some drugs, operational interventions, vaccines etc. according to the knowledge of relative risks known for an event.