If i want to collect data of about 20 patients with specific lesion and specific intervention and follow them for 3 years
The study design will be case series or cohort ?
Because i confused after reading this paper
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22213493
Both are observational study.
If you are finding the factors for the patients who are affected and finding the association, then it is case series,
If you are finding the risk factors and the result of the affected person over a period of time and compare with not affected person then it is cohort
Dear Osama:
It would be more informative if you give us some explanation about what you intent to do.
¿What is your research question?
Because 20 patients seems to be a very small sample size for any study.
Any time you want to detect any association between a factor (exposure) and a response (intervention), you need to keep in mind the power of the sample size you have on hand, otherwise, you will net be able to detect any association, due to the small power of the small sample size.
Furthermore, just remember that any time you have an intervention, you are not in observational studies, as their name says, because they are observational there is not any intervention.
If you have an intervention, and you can randomly assign it to study subjects, you are in an experimental study, it is called clinical trials in medicine.
But if you can not randomly assign the study subjects, you are in a quasi-experimental study.
Both mimic a cohort or follow up study.
Dear Osama, take a look in the article: Mathes T, Pieper D. Clarifying the distinction between case series and cohort studies in systematic reviews of comparative studies: potential impact on body of evidence and workload. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2017 Jul 17;17(1):107. doi: 10.1186/s12874-017-0391-8.
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