Concept in Definition ABC

In the field of epidemiology, the term of incidence is undoubtedly one of the most important since it has to watch with the increase that a disease or epidemic can show over time, thus allowing its analysis and possible solution.

It can be essentially defined as the number of new cases of disease that appear in a more or less specific situation in a given period of time. In this sense, the incidence is then a limited number of cases that appear and that, duly projected in graphics and analysis, allow to understand the growth of a disease or epidemiological condition in a temporal space bounded.

The notion of incidence is related to that of risk since it always implies possible growth projection of a disease according to the analysis of the new cases in which such a condition becomes Present

Thus, incidence becomes one of the values important and useful for epidemiologists as it not only allows you to look back and analyze the evolution of certain diseases in certain temporal-spatial conditions, if not it also allows project towards the future a growth or decrease of the disease according to the values analyzed.

The incidence of a disease should not be confused with the prevalence

While the first is linked to the notion of incident and, therefore, with that of something that is specific to a time and place, the second is related to the notion of permanence and so it means the total number of sick or disease cases in a population. Incidence, on the other hand, represents the number of new cases in a given period of time.

Examples for both cases would be, for incidence, dengue cases that appear in a population in a period of one year; for prevalence, the total dengue cases in a population since that disease has been discovered.