Camemberts et courbes

Article Article

In this sixth issue, you will find a new contribution dealing with the way to present the results you obtained from your study. Today, we have focused on the pie chart and the line graph.

Camemberts et courbes

This month, we’ll look at disability-adjusted life years (DALY) and potential years of life lost (PYLL) in Wudland. These results of course are not true results, but they serve as a support to illustrate the language used in presentations.

Dans ce sixième numéro, vous trouverez une nouvelle contribution indiquant la manière de présenter les résultats de votre étude. Aujourd’hui, nous avons ciblé la présentation d’un camembert et d’une courbe. Ce mois-ci, nous allons nous pencher sur les années de vie corrigées de l’incapacité (AVCI) et sur les années potentielles de vie perdues (APVP) à Wudland. Bien sûr, ces résultats ne sont pas de vrais résultats, mais nous les utilisons pour illustrer ce qui est dit lors de communications orales.

Disability-adjusted life years in men in Wudland for 2013 - cut-off 80 years

This pie chart shows the disability-adjusted life years or DALY for Wudland in 2013. The DALY provides an estimation of disease burden. It can be considered a combination of years of life lost and years living with disability and can be used to determine health policy priorities, healthcare needs for a given area and the effect of health policy. For this analysis, we’ve chosen a cut-off of 80 years, meaning that a man who lives to age 80 is regarded as having lived a full healthy life. As you can see, cancer and heart disease are responsible for almost half of the years of healthy life lost – at around twenty-five per cent each. The third and fourth leading causes of lost healthy life are mental and neurological disorders at 17% and 15%, respectively. When combined, these two entities become the major cause of loss, thus underlining the burden of such chronic diseases on healthcare resources.

It’s interesting to note that accidents account for only seven per cent of the loss of healthy life.

Lexical help

disability: handicap

disease burden: resources consumed to manage disease

health policy: healthcare strategy

a cut-off: a limit for statistical purposes

leading causes: principal causes

underlining: emphasizing

account for: represent

 

Camembert / Pie chart

un segment a segment/portion
une aire / une surface an area
hachuré hatched
en croisillons / quadrillé cross-hatched
hachures hatching/shadings
hachures croisées cross-hatching
bandes / rayures stripes
gris clair light grey
gris foncé dark grey
en grisé shaded
groupés clustered/grouped together
réguliers regular/regularly spaced
harmonieusement répartis evenly distributed/spaced
irréguliers irregular/irregularly spaced
linéaire linear

 

Number of PYLL in men x103 in Wudland (pop: 22.6 million) for cut-off of 80 years

In comparison, this graph shows the evolution of only one component of the DALY, potential years of life lost or PYLL, for Wudland between 1995 and 2010. Again, we used a cut-off of 80 years for this analysis. First of all, it’s interesting to note that accidents accounted for a major proportion of PYLL, which contrasts sharply with the DALY figures. This is because serious accidents often occur in young people and often result in death, in road traffic accidents, for example. This leads to a large number of lost years of life, but a relatively small disease burden compared with heart disease or cancer, for example.

Another interesting point shown by this graph is that years lost due to heart disease and cancer have fallen considerably since 1995. This is probably due to widespread screening, which has led to cancer detection at earlier stages and more effective therapy. More and more cancer patients are therefore living longer. As for heart disease, the fall is probably due to greater awareness of risk factors thanks to reinforced prevention campaigns since 1995, better secondary prevention, a more rapid response by the A & E services, and since 2007, the installation of automatic defibrillators in strategic places. However, more studies are needed to confirm these hypotheses.

Lexical help

component: element

figures: numbers, data

leads to: results in

widespread: generalised

screening: investigation

at earlier stages: before the cancer is advanced

awareness: knowledge

A & E services: accident and emergency services in GB

 

Courbe / Line graph

un schéma simplifié a diagram
un dessin a drawing
une ligne droite a straight line
une ligne courbe a curved line
une ligne brisée  a broken line
une ligne continue a solid/full/plain line.
une ligne discontinue a dashed line
une ligne en pointillés a dotted line
une ligne en dents de scie a saw-toothed line
un trait épais a thick line
un trait fin a thin line
un double trait a double line
un cercle plein a full circle
un cercle vide an open circle
une croix a cross
un triangle a triangle
un carré a square
un point a dot
un tiret a dash
une flèche an arrow
un sommet / pic a peak
une série de pics / points élevés a series of peaks/high points

 

Click on the following links to watch two short videos:
Cliquer sur les liens suivant pour voir deux courtes vidéos :
Résultats 3
Résultats 4

*Professeurs d'anglais médical à l'université de Dijon

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