Causal Inference in Anesthesia and Perioperative Observational Studies

Purpose of ReviewObservational studies are of great importance to anesthesia and perioperative care research, as they reflect routine clinical practice. However, because observational data are nonexperimental, assigning causality to identified relationships has a significant risk of bias. After describing the pros and cons of observational studies, we provide an overview of the different methods used to make causal inferences. Of these, we …