Observing and describing: Case series studies

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From the course by University of Cape Town

Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics

760 ratings

University of Cape Town

Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics

760 ratings

If you’ve ever skipped over`the results section of a medical paper because terms like “confidence interval” or “p-value” go over your head, then you’re in the right place. You may be a clinical practitioner reading research articles to keep up-to-date with developments in your field or a medical student wondering how to approach your own research. Greater confidence in understanding statistical analysis and the results can benefit both working professionals and those undertaking research themselves. If you are simply interested in properly understanding the published literature or if you are embarking on conducting your own research, this course is your first step. It offers an easy entry into interpreting common statistical concepts without getting into nitty-gritty mathematical formulae. To be able to interpret and understand these concepts is the best way to start your journey into the world of clinical literature. That’s where this course comes in - so let’s get started! The course is free to enroll and take. You will be offered the option of purchasing a certificate of completion which you become eligible for, if you successfully complete the course requirements. This can be an excellent way of staying motivated! Financial Aid is also available.

From the lesson

Getting things started by defining study types

Welcome to the first week of this course. We’ll be tackling five broad topics to provide you with an intuitive understanding of clinical research results. This isn’t a comprehensive statistics course, but it offers a practical orientation to the field of medical research and commonly used statistical analysis. The first topics will look at research methods and the collection of data - with a specific focus on study types. By the end of the lectures you should be able to identify which study types are being used and why the researchers selected them when you are reading a paper.

Observing and intervening: Observational & experimental studies3:10

Observing and describing: Case series studies3:14

Comparing groups: Case-control studies3:18

Collecting data at one point in time: Cross-sectional studies3:39

Studying a group with common traits: Cohort studies4:31

Let's intervene: Experimental studies6:48

Working with existing research: Meta-analysis and Systematic Review4:35

Meet the Instructors

Juan H Klopper
Dr
Department of Surgery

So let's discuss the case series first.

Now this is really the simplest form of research you can do.

And depending on the setting we have other terms for it.

We call it a clinical series, or even an audit.

We just want to find out how many of the certain type of cases we are seeing.

You might ask yourself, when it's so simple, why do we do it?

Well, it can really help us identify problems that we might be dealing with.

Or areas of interest, or areas of concern, and

it can really help us plan our further research.

Now I want you to consider an example.

This is by Donald and his colleagues from the nearby

Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital and from the HIV encephalopathy clinic.

Now it's a very common neurological disorder in these unfortunate children.

And all they wanted to do is just describe this set of children,

identify challenges they might be facing or their parents might be faced with, and

any opportunities to improve their lives.

So they went to the clinic, and

they chose 87 children form this neurological complications HIV clinic and

they worked from a pre-designed forms containing many variables.

If you look at the data that they collected really the age, the gender,

the birth history, were they premature, type of labor, was there any

early developmental problems, when did they start walking, was there delay

when they started walking laboratory counts like cd4 counts, viral loads, etc.

So all sorts of data is collected on these 87 children.

And if you look at the results section,

all they did was describe those data points that they had, the variable

they looked at under the background info they described.

What the gender was, how many were males, how many were females?

What were their ages?

When did they start on Antiretroviral therapy?

What was their home environment like, their school environment?

That they had been the repeating of their grades, etc.

They just described this subset of children.

They describe the clinical information you can read

all about the immunological status.

What was this CD4 count?

What was their viral load?

Some of them had imaging, MRI and CT scan.

And they just describe the findings.

It might sound very simple.

They just had one group of patients for the most part of this study and

they just describe those children.

But I want to read a quote from the study for

you just to really bring home how important this type of study can be.

And they say, the school failure is a major problem in this group and

in society where HIV remains highly stigmatizing and

the school is frequently not aware of the children's diagnosis,

many parents are reluctant to seek help for their child's learning problems.

So, we can describe that one group of children and we can come up with so

many problems that they face here, and we can now design ways to help them and

ways to do further research to answer many more questions surrounding this.

So, case series remains a very important study design in the literature.

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