Question

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using hospital patients as controls in case-control studies.

Answer 1

In a case-control study, causes of diesase are investigated after the occurrence of a disease.

Advantages of using hospital patients as controls in case-control studies include:

• as the hospital records of the patients are readily available which contains all the information,the findings can be obtained quickly.
• only minimal funding will be needed as the study takes place in a hospital where the patients under study stay in the same premises.This will reduce the cost of travel.
• if the study is conducted on a rare disease,using hospital patients as control is very efficient, as it helps to study diseases which have long latency period between exposure and disease manifestation.
• when exposure data is expensive or hard to obtain this method of using hospital patients is very useful as data is easily available for these patients.
• the follow-up of the study becomes easy when using hospital patients as it reduces the time and travel needed to find the subjects under study.

Disadvantages of using hospital patients as controls in case control studies include:

• one cannot generate a proper incidence data because the population under study is limited to those in the hospital only.
• there can be selection bias when selecting control group.
• if the record keeping of the hospital patients involved in the study is either inadequate or unreliable it will become difficult to conduct the study.
• the selection of controls(hospital patients) can be difficult,depending on whether the patient is willing to participate or not.