Biostats- Take Home 2

What were the means and median systolic blood pressure of the healthy and diseased population? Is there a difference between the two populations?

Create a relative frequency polygon that displays the distribution of each population on the same graph. How do the distributions of each population compare? Which method is better at comparing two populations? Use intervals of 5 mm Hg in your graph. Describe the distribution of the class. (Number of modes, shape, skewed, etc.). Is there a difference in the distributions of the two populations?

At the research hospital you are doing your residency in, the attending physician asked you to do a meta-analysis of the hospital records to see if using systolic blood pressure would be a good diagnostic screen for detecting atherosclerosis. Instructions will be posted on the Bio2900 Knowledge website.

a) Create a receiver operating characteristic curve.

b) Does the curve indicate that systolic blood pressure can be used as a diagnostic screen?

c) If so, what blood pressure should be used as an indicator of atherosclerosis concern? (Hint: The first stage of treatment is putting your patient on a low-fat, low sodium diet.)

d) What would be that test’s sensitivity? What would be the specificity?