What Can Regional Anesthesiology and Acute Pain Medicine Learn from "Big Data"?

Demonstrating value added to patients' experience through regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine is critical. Evidence supporting improved outcomes can be derived from prospective studies or retrospective cohort studies. Population-based studies relying on existing clinical and administrative databases are helpful when an outcome is rare and detecting a change would require studying large numbers of patients. This article discusses the effect of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine interventions on mortality and morbidity, infection rate, cancer recurrence, inpatient falls, local anesthetic systemic toxicity, persistent postsurgical pain, and health care costs.