Treatment was administered according to local treatment programmes and applied study protocols that were ongoing at the time of treatment.
A series of workshops and written materials were used to train clinicians to apply study protocols, the principles of evidence-based healthcare, and how to achieve non-hierarchical group consensus.
Even if modern techniques for reduction of radiation exposure are applied, the study protocol reported in the study by Bamberg et al. [58] still resulted in a comparably high total radiation exposure of an approximately 12-mSv-equivalent radiation dose (including the perfusion imaging and a prospective CTCA).
Additionally, we applied the study protocol for intervals of 10 s (n = 25) and 60 s (n = 18).
Beyer I. recruited the patients, applied the study protocol, prescribed the study medication, assured transport of the samples, analyzed the data and wrote the paper.
Nevertheless, restriction to complete index panels cannot eliminate all recruitment biases since it favours those practices where the GPs have applied the study protocol most attentively.
To investigate whether the PEEP-related short-term effect is only transient, we applied our study protocol to 10 of the 28 patients for durations of 180 and 300 s per level of PEEP.
Along with these advantages, however, comes the possibility of inter-site variability as a result of procedural differences between the study centers, such as variations in applying the study protocol [ 1].
11C-acetate PET is usually applied for specific pathophysiological studies in a limited number of research facilities [25, 41], and it would be difficult to apply this comprehensive study protocol to a large number of subjects.
All patients were evaluated prospectively by applying the same study protocol for study purposes.
