Introduction to Bayesian Analyses for Clinical Research

Bayesian analyses are becoming more popular as a means of analyzing data, yet the Bayesian approach is novel to many members of the broad clinical audience. While Bayesian analyses are foundational to anesthesia pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling, they also can be used for analyzing data from clinical trials or observational studies. The traditional null hypothesis significance testing (frequentist) approach uses only the data collected from the current study to make inferences. On the other hand, the Bayesian approach quantifies the external information or expert knowledge and combines the external information with the study data, then makes inference from this combined information. We introduce to the clinical and translational science researcher what it means to do Bayesian statistics, why a researcher would choose to perform their analyses using the Bayesian approach, when it would be advantageous to use a Bayesian instead of a frequentist approach, and how Bayesian analyses and interpretations differ from the more traditional frequentist methods. Throughout this paper, we use various pain- and anesthesia-related examples to highlight the ideas and statistical concepts that should be relatable to other areas of research as well.