Target Trial Emulation to Improve Causal Inference from Observational Data: What, Why, and How?

ABSTRACT Target trial emulation has drastically improved the quality of observational studies investigating the effects of interventions. Its ability to prevent avoidable biases that have plagued many observational analyses has contributed to its recent popularity. This review explains what target trial emulation is, why it should be the standard approach for causal observational studies that investigate interventions, and how to do a target trial emulation analysis. We discuss the merits of target trial emulation compared with often used, but biased analyses, as well as potential caveats, and provide clinicians and researchers with the tools to better interpret results from observational studies investigating the effects of interventions.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

• Publication date

  2023-05-03

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1681/ASN.0000000000000152PMID 37131279PMCID 10400102
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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