Know Your Chances
This book has been shown in two randomized trials to improve peoples' understanding of risk in the context of health care choices.
Key Concepts addressed:- 1-1 治療は害を及ぼすことがある
- 1-2 体験談は信憑性のないエビデンス
- 1-7 利益相反に気を付けること
- 1-9 早期発見が必ずしも良いとは限らない
- 1-11 治療の仕組みについての説明は間違っている可能性がある
- 1-12 劇的な治療効果はまれである
- 2-1 治療効果を特定するためには比較が必要です
- 2-2 比較群は同等でなければなりません
- 2-3 転帰は元の群で解析する必要があります
- 2-5 自分がどの治療を受けたのかを知るべきではありません
- 2-15 人数または転帰イベントの少ない公正な比較は誤解を招く可能性があります
- 2-16 信頼区間は報告する必要があります
- 2-17 「統計学的有意性」と「重要性」を混同しないでください
- 2-8 関連する公正な比較はすべて検討してください
- 2-13 効果の相対的な測定は誤解を招く可能性があります
- 3-1 測定された転帰はあなたにとって重要ですか?
- 3-3 あなたの環境では、その治療法は実用的ですか?
- 2-12 サブグループ解析は誤解を招く可能性があります
Details
The goal of this book is to help you better understand health information by teaching you about the numbers behind the messages—the medical statistics on which the claims are based. The book will also familiarize you with risk charts, which are designed to help you put your health concerns in perspective. By learning to understand the numbers and knowing what questions to ask, you’ll be able to see through the hype and find the credible information—if any—that remains.
Copyright © 2008, The Regents of the University of California.
Browse the contents:
- What This Book is About
- Part 1. What Is My Risk?
- Part 2. Can I Reduce My Risk?
- Part 3. Does Risk Reduction Have Downsides?
- Part 4. Developing a Healthy Skepticism
- Extra Help
- NOTES
Introduction
Every day we are faced with news stories, ads, and public service announcements that describe health threats and suggest ways we can protect ourselves. It’s impossible to watch television, open a magazine, read a newspaper, or go online without being bombarded by messages about the dangers we face.
Many of the messages are intended to be scary, warning us that we are surrounded by danger and hinting that everything we do or neglect to do brings us one step closer to cancer, heart disease, and death. Other messages are intended to be full of hope, reassuring us that technological miracles and breakthrough drugs can save us all. And many messages do both: they use fear to make us feel vulnerable and then provide some hope by telling us what we can do (or buy) to lower our risk. In addition, as you may suspect, a great many of these messages are wildly exaggerated: many of the risks we hear about are really not so big, and the benefits of many of the miraculous breakthroughs are often pretty small.
As a result, we are often left misinformed and confused. But it doesn’t have to be that way.