Causes template
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Charmaine Patel, M.D. [2]; Rim Halaby, M.D. [3]
Understanding the Difference Between Causes and Risk Factors
There are separate causes and risk factor pages. When you are working on the "Causes" page, you should also populate the "Risk Factor" page.
Characteristics of a "Cause" of a disease include the following: [1]
- The cause temporally precedes the disease.
- Per Kenneth Rothman: "An event, condition, or characteristic without which the disease would not have occurred."
- Per Susser: "A cause is something that makes a difference."
- Causes can be either a host or environmental factor (e.g., characteristics, conditions, actions of individuals, events, natural, social or economic phenom.
- Causes may be positive (presence of a causative exposure) or negative (lack of a preventive exposure).
What is a Risk Factor
A risk factor can be distinguished from a cause based upon the following: [2]
- A factor that is associated with an increased risk of an outcomes, but does not cause the outcome.
- Risk factors are surrogates or markers of a cause, but are not a direct cause themselves.
- Example: Place of birth, socioeconomic status, and marital status are all associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, but none of these are causes. In this example, place of birth, etc. are surrogates or markers for underlying causes, e.g., populations with a higher prevalence of genetic risk from BRCA1 and BRCA2 alleles, or having fewer children which in turn is a marker for unopposed estrogen stimulation of breast tissue. Being born in northern Europe per se is not a cause; it is a marker for populations that may have a greater genetic predisposition to breast cancer.
Introduction to the Causes Page
- The page name should be "(Disease name) causes", with only the first letter of the title capitalized.
- Goal: To provide a comprehensive list of all potential underlying causes of the condition. To categorize the causes both by organ system and alphabetically, so it is an easily searchable source for a medical professional.
- Remember causes are different from risk factors. For example, HIV causes AIDS, and the bacteria Bartonella henselae is the cause of cat scratch disease. In contrast, elevated cholesterol is termed a risk factor, but is not the cause of coronary heart disease, childhood obesity is a risk factor, but not the cause of diabetes.
- Search The Diseases Database (http://diseasesdatabase.com/content.asp) to assure that the list is complete.
- As with all microchapter pages liking to the main page, at the top of the edit box put {{CMG}}, your name template, and the microchapter navigation template you created at the beginning.
- Remember to create links within Wikidoc by placing [[square brackets]] around key words which you want to link to other pages. Make sure you makes your links as specific as possible. For example if a sentence contained the phrase anterior spinal artery syndrome, the link should be to anterior spinal artery syndrome not anterior or artery or syndrome. For more information on how to create links click here.
- Remember this is not the chapter to describe what the disease causes. What the disease causes would go under the natural history and complications chapter.
- Remember this is not the chapter where guidance is provided on how to distinguish the disorder from other disorders. That is the chapter on differentiating (disease name)from other diseases.
- Remember to follow the same format and capitalization of letters as outlined in the template below.
- You should put the name of the disease in the first sentence of every subsection.
Overview
- The overview section should include the disease name in the first sentence.
- The goal is to summarize the page several sentences, and the section can be the same as the causes segment on the overview page.
- Confirm that the overview statement is in a text format and does not contain bullet points.
- Confirm that periods, commas and spaces are appropriately placed.
- Confirm that no text is bolded or italicized randomly in between the text.
- Make sure to check for spellings and grammatical errors thoroughly.
- Confirm that there are no floating periods and comas.
- Confirm that periods and comas are present before the start of references instead at the end to avoid floating periods and comas.
- Confirm that all the internal links work and there are no black links in between texts.
- Confirm that no links are created to same page.
- Make sure to create maximum internal links and for complete words, e.g,
- Ventricular tachycardia – [[Ventricular]] [[tachycardia]] – not recommended
- Ventricular tachycardia- [[Ventricular tachycardia]] – recommended
- To see an example, click here.
Causes
Life Threatening Causes
- Life threatening causes include conditions which result in death or permanent disability within 24 hours if left untreated.
- Life threatening causes do not include chronic conditions.
- Make sure to include the following definition underneath the subheading of every life threatening causes section: Life-threatening causes include conditions which result in death or permanent disability within 24 hours if left untreated.
- The list of life threatening causes is arranged in alphabetical order.
Common Causes
- This section is to outline the most common causes of the disease or condition you are describing.
- This can be done in a list form where causes are arranged in alphabetical order.
Causes by Organ System
- To obtain the coding for the table seen below, click here. You need to copy the table content from the edit box, and paste it into the edit box.
- You can then list the causes by organ system. List the causes, separated by a comma under the appropriate category where it says "No underlying causes". Erase "No underlying causes" if you are listing causes in that category.
- For an example of the causes by organ system table in a causes microchapter, click here.
| Cardiovascular | No underlying causes |
| Chemical / poisoning | No underlying causes |
| Dermatologic | No underlying causes |
| Drug Side Effect | No underlying causes |
| Ear Nose Throat | No underlying causes |
| Endocrine | No underlying causes |
| Environmental | No underlying causes |
| Gastroenterologic | No underlying causes |
| Genetic | No underlying causes |
| Hematologic | No underlying causes |
| Iatrogenic | No underlying causes |
| Infectious Disease | No underlying causes |
| Musculoskeletal / Ortho | No underlying causes |
| Neurologic | No underlying causes |
| Nutritional / Metabolic | No underlying causes |
| Obstetric/Gynecologic | No underlying causes |
| Oncologic | No underlying causes |
| Opthalmologic | No underlying causes |
| Overdose / Toxicity | No underlying causes |
| Psychiatric | No underlying causes |
| Pulmonary | No underlying causes |
| Renal / Electrolyte | No underlying causes |
| Rheum / Immune / Allergy | No underlying causes |
| Sexual | No underlying causes |
| Trauma | No underlying causes |
| Urologic | No underlying causes |
| Miscellaneous | No underlying causes |
Causes in Alphabetical Order
- List the causes of the disease in alphabetical order. You may need to list across the page, as seen here
Citing Sources
- References should be cited for the material that you have put on your page. Type in {{reflist|2}}.This will generate your references in small font, in two columns, with links to the original article and abstract.
- For information on how to add references into your page, click here