Table 2.

Example: recruitment and randomization in mistletoe studies (39)

N	Characteristics	Exclusion	Reasons for exclusion
1922	Breast operation from May 1999 to August 2001 in Heidelberg university hospital	518	Only biopsy, benign tumor
1404	Diagnosis breast cancer	883	Inclusion criteria not fulfilled or exclusion criteria fulfilled: no primary breast cancer (316), other stage (105), pre-operative chemotherapy (72), age (63), other missing inclusion criteria (73), other exclusion criteria (254)
521	Post-operative check of inclusion and exclusion criteria with clinical registry	367	Refusal of trial in general (184), logistics (74), mistletoe preferred (51), no histology (42), participation in other study (13), refusal of chemotherapy (3)
154	Patient interview: all inclusion and exclusion criteria OK	80	No chemotherapy (55) or other chemotherapy (inclusion criteria) (19), other reasons (6)
74	Study group	45	Prefers to determine the therapy (22), prefers mistletoe (14), prefers no injections (4), other (5)
29	Willing to be randomized