This RCT study met several challenges but succeeded in recruiting compliance to the intervention and in following 60 female workers on long-term sick leave for two follow-ups. The time period of recruiting participants had to be extended due to participants’

various needs of changing time for measures and due to dropouts during the intervention period. Several earlier RCT studies, P5091 molecular weight reported and not reported, had major difficulties in recruiting and following voluntary workers on long-term sick leave, and in completing an RCT study. We had the intention to make the two intervention programs as attractive as possible to assure high compliance and attendance, as well as a close and easy access to the interventionist; this is more of an issue with long-term intervention programs, these ones lasting for four weeks. Noteworthy is that good compliance can result in an overestimation of the treatment effect. The control group did not have this contact. However, the length of the visit with the research nurses, the amount of information given and efforts were taken to achieve a similar overall atmosphere

for all participants for the three groups at the three different occasions. Dropouts were slightly higher in the myofeedback training group. Perceived problem with myofeedback equipment was the main reported reason. Another possible reason may have been the higher proportion of mental comorbidity in this group, which has been related to length of SB-715992 sick leave (Hensing et al. 1997; Savikko et al. 2001). Most (67%) dropouts during the intervention also had a mental disorder as comorbidity. In order to keep the participants from dropping out, we believe it was important for the intervention to be easy to conduct, for it to

take place in the participants’ own homes, and for there to be flexibility in providing times for follow-up measurements and in access to, and support from, the study coordinator and interventionist. All participants had a lot of earlier experience of SAR302503 rehabilitation activities, which types were also rather equally distributed between the groups. Further, they were still on long-term sick leave Monoiodotyrosine and we could therefore not control for its influence. Regarding the statistics, due to the number of participants and non-normally distributed data, the change from baseline to first and second follow-up was assessed through differences between the measuring occasions. In order to increase power in the analysis, a longitudinal analysis method with repeated measurements was used for the WAI items and neck pain, since data were considered normally distributed. Due to the low number of participants, unadjusted analysis was performed. Furthermore, potential confounders and interaction in relation to WAI items and neck pain are not considered. Both analysis methods indicate similar results although the longitudinal analysis method uses more information compared with Student’s t-test for dependent observations.