The Epidemiology of Asbestosis

Résumé fourni par la source

Information on the epidemiology of conditions that tend to be rapidly fatal derives mainly from mortality studies in which the outcome of interest is usually established from the death certificate. By contrast, information on the epidemiology of chronic nonmalignant conditions, which develop slowly over time and may start to disable many years before death, derives by and large from prevalence studies. These are carried out in exposed populations, and the various clinical features are usually studied individually, rather than synthesized into a diagnosis. Clinical features used to establish the diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis (and/or of pleural fibrosis) that may follow exposure to mineral fibers include symptoms (such as dyspnea), signs (such as basal crackles), and laboratory tests (including the chest radiograph and lung functions). These clinical features are all nonspecific, i.e., they can be evoked by similar pathophysiological processes due to other agents and/or causes. In the early stages of evolution, obviously not all clinical features are present. 1–4 Thus the criteria for establishing the presence of these nonmalignant conditions for the purposes of epidemiology are inevitably different from, and usually considerably less stringent than, those used to establish their presence for the purpose of clinical diagnosis and/or medicolegal attributability and/or compensation. 5–7

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.