The importance of causal relationships in medicine and health care
- DOI:
- 10.1093/med/9780199682898.003.0002
This shows the importance and relevance of causal relationships in clinical medicine, public health, and wider healthcare and social issues. It gives a definition of causation, and distinguishes necessary, sufficient, and general quantitative causation. Randomised trials are discussed as showing a direct test of causation. Epidemiological methods of counting disease are explained, showing mortality, incidence, prevalence, disease duration, the relationship between these, and cumulative incidence.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Medicine Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.