Point prevalence
Encyclopedia
In epidemiology
, point prevalence is a measure of the proportion of people in a population who have a disease or condition at a particular time, such as a particular date. It is like a snap shot of the disease in time. It can be used for statistics on the occurrence of chronic diseases. This is in contrast to period prevalence
which is a measure of the proportion of people in a population who have a disease or condition over a specific period of time, say a season, or a year.
Point prevalence can be described by the formula:
Prevalence = Number of existing cases on a specific date ÷ Number of people in the population on this date
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
, point prevalence is a measure of the proportion of people in a population who have a disease or condition at a particular time, such as a particular date. It is like a snap shot of the disease in time. It can be used for statistics on the occurrence of chronic diseases. This is in contrast to period prevalence
Period prevalence
In epidemiology, Period prevalence is the proportion of the population with a given disease or condition over a specific period of time. It could describe how many people in a population had a cold over the cold season in 2006, for example....
which is a measure of the proportion of people in a population who have a disease or condition over a specific period of time, say a season, or a year.
Point prevalence can be described by the formula:
Prevalence = Number of existing cases on a specific date ÷ Number of people in the population on this date