General preparation
All authors have participated according to the criteria for authors
The paper is not published elsewhere or under consideration for another journal
The manuscript length is less than 4,000 words excluding reference list (equiv. to 9 printed pages).
All unpublished references are enclosed, as well as all papers written by the same authors dealing with the same patient groups, etc.
Financial and other conflicts of interests are disclosed in the paper
Approval of human studies given by an ethics committee is described (if appropriate).
We have followed the CONSORT guidelines when reporting a randomized controlled trial (RCT).
A power analysis of the design with minimum number of participants in our RCT has been performed to avoid a type II error.
All persons mentioned in the Acknowledgement have been informed about this and have given their approval
A native English-speaking medical professional has written OR thoroughly revised the text.
Interval data should be presented with means and 95% confidence intervals
Ordinal data from categorical (rating) scales are presented with medians, quartiles and range. (If necessary and to compare to clinical praxis, means and SD may be given in addition).
For ordinal data and for non-normally distributed interval data, nonparametric statistical tests have been used.
We have presented new data only in the results section.
Conflicts of interest are disclosed (if appropriate).
Title page:
A running head is given on the Title page (no longer than 8 words)
Abstract:
The abstract has appropriate headings and does not contain more than 200 words.
3 – 8 key words from the MESH list of PubMed are given after the abstract.
References:
A maximum of 40 references are listed at the end of the manuscript text.
References are numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text
References are formatted according to the journal style.
For any reference cited "in press" the article is included
Personal communications and unpublished observations are not used as numbered references but are written as footnotes.
Figures:
The Figures are numbered with Arabic numerals
The Figures are sent as separate files formatted according to the rules of the journal (preferably in tif format).
Photographs of recognizable persons are accompanied by a signed release from the patient or guardian authorizing publication
Figure legends are written in the ordinary manuscript, not on the figures
Tables:
The Tables are numbered with Roman numerals
Submission:
All files have been uploaded using submission online
