This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Arch Ophthalmol. 2001;119:1374-1375.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A 1980 ARTICLE ENTITLED "Epidemiology in Ophthalmology"¹ lamented the fact that, ". . . ophthalmology, like many other medical specialties, is steeped in tradition and places great value on expert opinion." The article advocated for a more scientifically rigorous, epidemiological approach to the study of ophthalmic diseases and their treatments. Now, 2 decades later, it is time to reexamine the definition of epidemiology and its role in ophthalmology and to explore whether and how ophthalmic epidemiology has matured over the ensuing years.

The fact that a particular disease is not randomly distributed throughout a population, but appears with varying frequency in different subgroups, is implicit in the definition of epidemiology. By investigating the uneven distribution of disease and the factors that influence it, epidemiology provides the foundation for disease prevention and control. The identification of risk factors for disease development is fundamental to epidemiology for 2 reasons. First, some of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?