Reply to Letter Re: Endovenous laser ablation with and without high ligation compared with high ligation and stripping in the treatment of great saphenous varicose veins: Initial results of a multicenter, randomized controlled trial

摘要

Dear Miss Aslam, Thank you very much for the honor and your effort to give us a detailed analysis of our work.You mentioned that we included 449 instead of the calculated 469 patients to reach full statistical power. As described in the paper we calculated a 10% drop out rate over 2 years. Full power would be reached with 422 patients so that the published data in this paper are indeed of some relevance. You are absolutely right that the primary endpoint is at 2 years. We thought the perioperative data concerning the comfort of the portrayed methods are so valuable that it was worth publishing them as it is one of the main points of interest for the patient to know how irritating a method may be.