Statistics in Medicine: merit and mith cogitation of a clinician

• Autor(a) principal: de Oliveira Soares, A.
• Data de Publicação: 1996
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://revista.spmi.pt/index.php/rpmi/article/view/2263
• topic: estatística; statistics

Biological sciences are not of an exact nature. Medicine is not properly a science, but a scientifi­cally founded profession wich deals with indivi­dual cases of undefinable variety. To mathematize Medicine is attempting but faces great limitations. Statistics, the branch of mathematics more closely linked to medical activities, is very useful to define trends. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that statistical antecipations will in fact happen, in a indi­vidual case. Additionally to this limitation of intrinsic natu­re, one must be aware of formal errors, abusive interpretations, difficulties in reading results, di­fferences of conclusions in dependence of metho­ds, and many other problems. Clinical decision must consider statistical data, among several other sour­ces of information. However, the global sense of the doctor will never be replaced by the myth of an abstract and unexpressive list of figures. A diag­nostic procedure, a therapeutic approach, the dis­closure of the prognosis are always personal choi­ces. The physician makes his option having in mind the complex problematic of an individual patient, wich is by no means possible to simplify in a for­mula or an equation.