Jose Luis Turabian, Sandra Moreno-Ruiz and Raúl Cucho-Jove
From a previous publication by the authors about an imported case of Chikungunya (a disease little known in Spain, but with numbers increasing worldwide, and due to the presence of the vector in the Mediterranean area), we show a fable to explain in brief, a deepening on epidemiological implications in family medicine, which is not made in standard textbooks and can be a contribution relevant to the practice of family medicine in their interconnection with epidemiology. The story or metaphor exposed allows induce conceptual categories of how it should look epidemiology, both in infectious diseases and chronic diseases, from family medicine, showing differences, nuances, approaches and practical tools of epidemiological work, which could be applied to any case or patient, and which are different between family medicine and other medical specialties, such as: 1. the great accessibility of patients to their family doctor, and its role as first contact with the patient ("numerator"); 2.- the continuity of care that allows knowledge of incidence and prevalence rates; 3.- The special method for screening ( "case-finding"); 4.- differences between sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tests regarding the hospital setting; 5.- the work with a population as "denominator"; 6.-the conflict between the recommendations of experts in public health and clinical practice with the particular patient (differentiation between frequentist or Bayesian probability); and 7.- the work with small geographic bases.
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