Approval for the publication of this report and any accompanying images was obtained from the ethics committee of Jules Bordet Institute since the patient passed away before the request of informed consent.
The UK Guidelines describe long pre-counselling as not necessary and recommends replacing it by brief pre-test information addressing the benefits of testing, its voluntary nature and the request of informed consent.
The exclusion criteria were: 1. Patients with contraindications to hepatic artery cannulation; 2. Chronic hepatic encephalopathy that renders unenforceable the request of informed consent; 3. Patients with portal vein thrombosis; 4. Active alcoholism; 5. Active infections; 6.
8 For each study we determined the number of eligible participants, number approached for consent, number who responded to the request for consent, number of active consents, and number of active declines.
Given literacy issues, the explanation of the research, the request for consent, and the giving of consent was oral (this was approved by the Ethics Committees of the University of Dundee and the University of Allahabad).
The information provided to women in our survey package explained that the purpose of this request for consent was to avoid collecting duplicate data that already exist, reduce survey length and participant burden.
The study also explored the acceptability of a request for consent to link survey data with existing routinely collected health data (omitting the latter data items from the survey reduced survey length and participant burden).
The wording of the request for consent on the survey form was: I consent to take part in this survey, and have my survey responses linked to health information about me and my baby's birth, previously recorded by the hospital where I gave birth.
However, future research examining the contribution of a request for consent to record linkage on survey participation would be valuable, particularly among younger and economically disadvantaged participants who appear less likely to participate in surveys and less likely to give consent to linkage.
Prior to data collection a request letter, copy of consent form and an information sheet were sent to respective dental schools to obtain approval and to provide better understanding of the research project.
