Adamina M Guller U Weber WP Oertli D 2006 BACKGROUND Evidence-based surgery has been established as a cornerstone of good clinical practice, promising to improve the treatment of patients and the quality of surgical education. However, evidence-based surgery requires dedicated clinicians trained to perform methodologically sound clinical investigations. Statistical knowledge is therefore invaluable. Surgical studies often cannot be randomized. Propensity scores offer a powerful alternative to multivariable analysis in the assessment of observational, non-randomized surgical studies. Unfortunately, many surgeons are unaware of this important analytical approach that has gained increasing stature in medical research. Thus, propensity score analyses are not used often in surgical studies. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of propensity score analysis, allowing the surgeon to understand the role, advantages and limitations of propensity scores, boosting their development in surgical investigations. https://sonar.ch/global/documents/137557 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1002/bjs.5265 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/16400708 The British journal of surgery. - 2006 Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic Evidence-Based Medicine General Surgery Humans Outcome Assessment, Health Care Predictive Value of Tests Prognosis Regression Analysis Propensity scores and the surgeon. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501