title: [Biostatistics: a fundamental tool for the elaboration of radiological articles].
abstract: Biostatistics has become an indispensable tool in all domains of the Health Sciences. Biostatistics is essential for ensuring valid decision making, and knowing the basic principles of biostatistics well will enable us to use this tool correctly. In this article, first biostatistics is defined and then its use and justification are discussed. The aim is to go through all of the steps that should be followed in the entire research process, beginning with specifying the objective of the study, approaching different study designs (cross-sectional, prospective and retrospective longitudinal, clinical trials) and the most commonly used statistical techniques in the Health Sciences, from descriptive statistics necessary to begin any study, to univariate analysis of both qualitative and quantitative variables, to the multivariate analyses most commonly used in our field.
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Medicina Interna (Unidad de Infecciosas), Hospital de Móstoles, Madrid, España. ebarros.html@salud.madrid.org
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Condés
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000592:standards*; D001699:Biometry; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D011871:Radiology