Cooper, Natalie A. M.
Middleton, Lee
Smith, Paul
Denny, Elaine
Stobert, Lynda
Daniels, Jane
Clark, T. Justin
,
Funding for this research was provided by:
Health Technology Assessment Programme (06/404/84)
Article History
Received: 10 April 2015
Accepted: 5 April 2016
First Online: 17 May 2016
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at ExternalRef removed. Prof Clark reports separate research grants from Hologic (formerly Cytyc) and Smith & Nephew to conduct clinical trials in ambulatory care; and honoraria for training and lecturing and travel expenses from the following instrument manufacturers who produce health technologies that can be used in ambulatory care; Ethicon Women’s Health; Hologic; Smith & Nephew; Conceptus; Bayer. Dr. Smith reports a grant from Smith & Nephew, during the conduct of the study, for a trial comparing techniques for office polypectomy. All other authors report no conflicts of interest.
: All persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study.
: The study sponsors were the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, and the study was funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme (06/404/84). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme, the NIHR, the National Health Service or the English Department of Health.
: Neither the funder nor sponsor had any role in study design, data collection, interpretation or analysis or in writing the report for publication. The authors had full access to all the data from the study. The authors vouch for the accuracy and completeness of the data and analyses.
: The corresponding author affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate and transparent account of the study being reported that no important aspects of the study have been omitted and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained.The full dataset is available from the corresponding author. Consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymised and risk of identification is low.
: Ethical approval was obtained from the South West Research Ethics Committee on 15th February 2008. Reference number: 08/H0206/6.