Estudios transversales

Abstract

The cross-sectional study is an observational epidemiological study in which exposure to one or more risk factors (RF) and the disease of interest is measured simultaneously and only once. The indicator used for this type of study is the prevalence, which is useful for quantifying the frequency of damage to health. Let’s answer the questions: How many?, Where?, Who? and When? Among its advantages are that they are simple and quick to make, are inexpensive and provide a profile of the population in a short time as one or more health problems. Also they are of great importance in planning health programs. Its main disadvantage is the temporary ambiguity; also does not determine causality and information can not be generalized to the past. The biases that we find are selection, information and memory. Sampling techniques are used for convenience, probabilistic and non-probabilistic. The obtained information is organized in a 2x2 contingency table, which we can obtain the measures frequency (prevalence), measures of association and measures of potential impact.