Research and the anaesthesiologist: Cutting the clutter and overcoming the odds.

Proper use and interpretation of confidence intervals are more important than just the P values which can be dispensed with if the confidence intervals are stated. As is true for other clinicians, research skills for anaesthesiologists are important not only for individual progress, but also for advances in this fast-evolving discipline. Statistical significance versus clinical importance of observed effect sizes: What do P values and confidence intervals really represent? Too wide confidence intervals indicate lack of precision of the estimates as a consequence of small sample size. [Extracted from the article]