Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
In both COLOR and COLOR II, a secretariat was funded by grants to the principal investigator, and no recruitment fee was required from participating hospitals. The main grant for the central secretariat was given from a technical commercial company (Ethicon Endo‐Surgery Europe). In COLOR and COLOR II Ethicon Endo‐Surgery Europe had no influence on the trial protocol, on running the trial, on analyses, on conclusions or on publications, which is important to ascertain scientific independence. In both COLOR and COLOR II local investigators may have sought funding from local/national organizations but this was not a requirement for participation. A central secretariat collected data and was active in reminding local centres of missing case report forms (CRFs). In the Swedish part of the trials, all patient‐related outcome measures (quality of life, function, etc.) were obtained through questionnaires sent from and returned to the Swedish secretariat, a ‘third party’, in order to lessen the ‘I want to please my surgeon’ effect [ 8 ]. It is perhaps one factor explaining the high patient response rates.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland.