Biostatistics in Clinical Medicine, 3rd ed.

Written for clinicians and specifically for physicians, this book addresses the problems that physicians have - problems of diagnosis, treatment, different dosage levels, tests, and the conflicts between tests that are carried out. The authors use a unique approach that prepares clinicians "to understand probability and statistics and apply them to the care of the individual patient," instead of presenting statistical methods tool by tool for research on masses of patients, this book emphasizes the use of tools in problems of diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up.

Each chapter contains at least one detailed clinical problem; problems for practice appear at the end of each chapter. Quantitative methods lead to interpretation and solutions. The book consists of 14 chapters that have three themes: diagnostic testing and clinical decision analysis (3 chapters), day-to-day variability and the interpretation and application of clinical data (7 chapters), and the interpretation and application of epidemiological investigations (4 chapters). Chapter tides range from "Has the Treatment Helped the Patient? Intrasubject and Intersubject Variability" to "Blood Pressure and Hypertension: Distribution and Variability" to "Assessing Treatment Efficacy by Analyzing Counts." The book devotes at least 20 pages each to explaining P values, meta-analysis, and decision analysis, Other important chapters include "Reading a Report of a Clinical Trial," "Applying a Clinical Trial," and "Reading a Report of an Epidemiologic Study."

This book is oriented toward the way people in the field think practically about the subject matter that they are working with. Although the book is not directly applicable to physical therapy clinicians, this book will enhance the ability of any clinician to treat patients based on facts and not just intuition and past experience. I would not suggest this book for a text in an introductory course on statistics, I would, however, recommend this book for physical therapists or occupational therapists who are clinically oriented, to be read and possibly used in a study-group setting of clinicians, But be prepared - this book requires readers to think clinically, statistically, and critically, which is generally more demanding than typical statistical texts.