Hand-In # 4 5. Are anesthetics safe? The National Halothane Study was a major in
ID: 2923332 • Letter: H
Question
Hand-In # 4 5. Are anesthetics safe? The National Halothane Study was a major investigation of the 34 mojor hospitals showed the following death rates for four common anesthetics. Page 5 safety of anesthetics used in surgery. Records of over 850,000 operations performed in Death rate: 1.7% 1.7% 3.4% 1.9% There seems to be a clear association between the anesthetic used and the death rate of (a) Explain why we call the National Halothane Study an observational study rather patients. Anesthetic C appears to be dangerous than an experiment, even though it compared the results of using different anes- thetics in actual surgery (b) When the study looked at hurking variables that are related to a doctor's choice of anesthetic, it found that Anesthetic C was not causing extra deaths. Describe how a lurking variable could lead to confounding in this situation.Explanation / Answer
Anaesthetic C could be used for surgeries that have a higher risk of complications, leading falsely to conclude that the anaesthetic caused the deaths, when the true cause was related to the type of illness. The severity of the patients' illnesses is also likely a lurking variable. Different anaesthesiologists may prefer to use different anaesthetics so there may be differences due to the surgeons.
a)
The data was collected after the anaesthesia was administered.
b)
Type of surgery, length of surgery, (maybe longer operations require anaesthetic C), age of patient, (maybe older patients respond better to anaesthetic C) patient allergy to certain anaesthetics, how healthy the patient was before the surgery.
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