SETBACKS IN A STUDY OF THE PREVALENCE OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS IN THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO

Abstract

Purpose: Considering the difficulty to obtain accurate data on multiple sclerosis in the State of Rio de Janeiro, it was decided to design, develop and implement a relational database in order to carry out a study of its prevalence. Methods: Microsoft Access 2010 was chosen because of its rapid application development features. The data were imported from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing 1507 rows. Since several attributes contained null values, some rows were not considered. Results: The query returned 301 multiple sclerosis patients, alive and born in Rio de Janeiro. Among them, 221 were female, 80 male, 198 white-skinned and 103 Afro-descendants. Conclusions: Unlike databases, spreadsheets allow inconsistency, redundancy, limiting data view and poor performance with large data sets. In a multiuser environment they require a lot of discipline, attention and knowledge from the users. On the other hand, one of the undeniable advantages of databases lies in enforcing safeguards for data entry. In this context, the number of patients could have been higher if a database had been used from the very beginning of this study.