Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad, India.
J R Coll Physicians Edinb. 2020 Dec;50(4):398-402. doi: 10.4997/JRCPE.2020.409.
A thorough understanding of the pros and cons of the various study designs is critical to correct interpretation of their results. Retrospective studies are an important tool to study rare diseases, manifestations and outcomes. Findings of these studies can form the basis on which prospective studies are planned. Retrospective studies however have several limitations owing to their design. Since they depend on review of charts that were originally not designed to collect data for research, some information is bound to be missing. Selection and recall biases also affect the results and reasons for differences in treatment between patients and lost follow ups can often not be ascertained and may lead to bias. Readers need to critically evaluate the methods and carefully interpret the results of retrospective studies before they put them to practice. Researchers should avoid over generalisation of results and be cautious in claiming cause-effect relationship in retrospective studies.
深入了解各种研究设计的优缺点对于正确解释其结果至关重要。回顾性研究是研究罕见疾病、表现和结果的重要工具。这些研究的发现可以为前瞻性研究提供基础。然而，由于设计原因，回顾性研究存在一些局限性。由于它们依赖于对最初并非为研究收集数据而设计的图表进行审查，因此必然会缺少一些信息。选择和回忆偏倚也会影响结果，并且患者之间治疗差异的原因也无法确定，这可能会导致偏倚。读者在将回顾性研究结果付诸实践之前，需要批判性地评估方法并仔细解释结果。研究人员应该避免对结果进行过度概括，并在回顾性研究中谨慎声称因果关系。
