Our Party finds itself in the enviable position of having more candidates than available spots on the stage, so we ask that you fill out the following brief application to be considered for inclusion: 1.
A priori, we defined the following criteria for inclusion: 1.
The research identified three levels of inclusion: (1) at the strategic level; (2) at the operational level; (3) at the monitoring level.
Research studies containing a control-arm and one or more intervention-arms fulfilling the following criteria were eligible for inclusion: 1) Repeated measures experimental design.
Centres were offered four inclusion schemes to avoid selective inclusion: 1. all patients, 2. all patients admitted on a specific weekday, 3. all patients admitted in one week per month and 4. first 10 consecutive patients per month.
Patients were evaluated at inclusion, 1 week before surgery; 4 weeks after surgery (before active or sham stimulation) and at the end of the first randomization period (weeks 12 and 17).
