In the investigation of an epidemic of a fatal disease such as SARS, the most appropriate measure to describe the frequency of death from the disease is the:
A)Mortality rate
B)Case‐fatality rate
C)Attack rate
D)Standardised mortality ratio
E)Incidence rate

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The case‐fatality rate (also called the case‐fatality ratio) is the proportion of
people with a given disease/condition who die from it in a given period.It is a common
measure of the short‐term severity of an acute disease.The mortality rate (A) also
measures the rate at which people die from a disease but it is usually calculated over a
period of one year and so is less appropriate for an epidemic of a rapidly fatal disease.It
also tells us nothing about how many people are getting the disease and so nothing
about how fatal it is.The attack rate (C) tells us how quickly people are developing the
disease but nothing about how many are dying from it.The standardised mortality ratio
(D) tells us how much likely someone is to die of disease in one population compared to
a reference population while the incidence rate (E) measures the rate at which people in
the population are getting the disease.

In the Investigation of an Epidemic of a Fatal Disease