Recently in our city HEV induced hepatitis outbreak is going on. Daily about 30-50 cases of hepatitis visiting outdoor or admitting indoor of Medicine, Paediatrics, Gynae obs and ICU of our hospital. Most are Anti HEV positive. What type of study design is suitable to address these problem? Please!
Easiest study you can do is a descriptive one including age [including pediatric], sex, outcome in liver failure vs non failure group [depending on derangements in LFT, P.time/INR, USG abdomen], outcome in pregnancy, time to recovery, serotypes of the virus, source of outbreak etc.
While initiating a descriptive study will help not only in understanding the personal attributes of the disease , it will also help in time & place distributions . Which will help to the health authorities to undertake study in the affected community and take appropriate measures to prevent the further occurrence of cases in the community,
Dear Rajat,
I could not follow you in terms of your objective. Inevitably study design is based of your objectives. If you just want to know about epidemiological data of your patients, as Bishan and Guatam mentioned you can run a cross sectional descriptive study and collect your defined data. If you are looking for the possible reasons of outbreak it would be different. Hope it helps.
Regards
Zahra
Dear Rajat,
I agree with Zahra and others that your question here lack of scientific objective to be investigated, so it depends on what you want to know: if just get first impression on WHO, WHERE and WHEN get disease best option is descriptive study, if you whant to know WHY get disease, what is RISK, or HOW to stop the outbreak you should go for analytical or experimental study designs.
HEV like HAV are mainly transmitted by oral route through the ingestion of water or food products contaminated with this virus
Such situations provide us initiative to undertake the action research while working with health system.
It is very important to collect all the epidemiological data of the spread of the infection in order to take the preventive measures to stop its diffusion
it also requires coordination between hospital management & area health authority to initiate appropriate public health measures to prevent further occurrence of cases
Study design depends on your objective. You may start with descriptive survey followed by explanatory/explorative study to understand the factors associated with the previdence so as to recommend preventive measures
Why you need study on hepatitis E, data is already available in literature. If there is lack of data from your country then you may go with descriptive study; this will help to increase awareness about the disease process and you will have outcome in your hand according to your setup.
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