You are interested in understanding whether chronic obstructive pulmonary diseas

Question

You are interested in understanding whether chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients who switch from smoking cigarettes to using e-cigarettes have better COPD outcomes than those who continue smoking cigarettes. Keep in mind that e-cigarette liquid is made with specific amounts of nicotine in it. (1) If you were to design a randomized clinical trial to test this, what would the randomized groups be? The groups will differ because of their assigned intervention, so be specific about what the intervention(s) is(are). (2) Propose an alternate, but still prospective, study design that does not use randomization. Describe the observational groups to be compared. Explain how it is a better design (or: explain how it is a worse design) than a randomized clinical trial; phrase your answer specific to this context of smoking and COPD.

Explanation / Answer

1. If one needs to perform clincial trials with this cohort one need to have set of populations that 1st cohort:smoke cigarettes and have COPD, 2nd cohort: take e cigarettes and do not have COPD, 3rd cohort:smoke cigarettes and do not have COPD 4th cohort: take e cigarettes and still have COPD 5th cohort: switch from smoking to e cigarette and COPD outcome improves 6th cohort: switch from smoking to e cigarette and COPD outcome does not improve 7th cohort: control which do not have either of them yet have COPD 8th cohort: control which do not have either of them and do not have COPD (healthy individual). All these random groups would make a great clinical tudy as to show the importance of e cigaretters in people who are already addicted to smoking.

2. As mentioned in answer 1, my population cohort will remain the same. I will be comparing different individuals across each cohort to arrive at a particular conclusion. One should particularly compare a cohort where individuals improve upon COPD when usign e cigarette compared to regular smoking. If that is significant, then the study becomes interesting. Also the frequency or percentage of population that have COPD when using e cigarette should be very low and non significant whereas smoking and COPD cause should be highly correlated to each other.

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