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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
medicine
Distinguishing case series from cohort studies
Annals of Internal Medicine, Volume 156, No. 1, Year 2012
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Description
Case series are a commonly reported study design, but the label "case series" is used inconsistently and sometimes incorrectly. Mislabeling impairs the appropriate indexing and sorting of evidence. This article tries to clarify the concept of case series and proposes a way to distinguish them from cohort studies. In a cohort study, patients are sampled on the basis of exposure and are followed over time, and the occurrence of outcomes is assessed. A cohort study may include a comparison group, although this is not a necessary feature. A case series may be a study that samples patients with both a specific outcome and a specific exposure, or one that samples patients with a specific outcome and includes patients regardless of whether they have specific exposures. Whereas a cohort study, in principle, enables the calculation of an absolute risk or a rate for the outcome, such a calculation is not possible in a case series. © 2012 American College of Physicians.
Authors & Co-Authors
Dekkers, Olaf Matthijs
Netherlands, Leiden
Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum
Egger, Matthias
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Altman, Douglas G.
United Kingdom, Oxford
Wolfson College Oxford
Vandenbroucke, Jan P.
Netherlands, Leiden
Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum
Statistics
Citations: 213
Authors: 4
Affiliations: 3
Identifiers
Doi:
10.7326/0003-4819-156-1-201201030-00006
ISSN:
00034819
Study Design
Cohort Study
Quasi Experimental Study
Study Approach
Quantitative