Another questionnaire, called the LES (Liverpool Elbow Score), is used in Liverpool [ 27], but this is not a totally patient-rated questionnaire.
Totally patients of stage I-IV were 26, 47, 100 and 8 cases, respectively.
Their study included a totally different patient population, patients with (relatively) healthy microcirculation.
Not all patients had totally the same imaging scheme prior to SPECT/CT.
All patients recovered totally and were discharged from hospital after a stay ranging from 3 to 5 days.
Thirdly, our study population may not be totally representative of all patients receiving PI-ART.
Electrophysiology: compound muscle action potentials (CMAP) were markedly reduced (mean 18±15%5% of normal values) or totally absent in all patients.
Interestingly, patients with synchronous expression of EGFR and pEGFR had worse prognosis (P = 0.019) than did EGFR-positive or pEGFR-positive patients and totally negative patients.
The adjusted sample size of 63 patients per arm (totally 252 patients, including 10% drop-out rate) will have a power of 80% to detect difference between treatment arms, with a 2-sided alpha = 0.5.
Even if the causes of NIV failure are not totally cleared, patient and interface selection seem to be the major determinant (2).
Allowing for a dropout rate of up to 10%, the target recruitment number should be 566 patients totally, or 283 patients in each arm [ 27].
