A case series (also known as a clinical series) is a medical research descriptive study that tracks patients with a known exposure given similar treatment or examines their medical records for exposure and outcome. It can be retrospective or prospective and usually involves a smaller number of patients than more powerful case-control studies or randomized controlled trials. Case series may be consecutive or non-consecutive, depending on whether all cases presenting to the reporting authors over a period were included, or only a selection.
Case series may be confounded by selection bias, which limits statements on the causality of correlations observed; for example, physicians who look at patients with a certain illness and a suspected linked exposure will have a selection bias in that they have drawn their patients from a narrow selection (namely their hospital or clinic).
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