Fig. 6.

Patients receiving analgesic medications (intention-to-treat cohort). Number of patients using analgesic drugs for patients in the fast-track rehabilitation group and the standard rehabilitation group (ITT cohort). The horizontal arrow lines indicate 50 % (half of the patients) in each study group and the vertical arrow lines indicate the postoperative day on which half of the patients stopped consuming analgesic drugs. Thus, 50 % of patients in the fast-track rehabilitation group needed 30 days less than in the standard rehabilitation group to stop consuming analgesic drugs (i.e., 71 days after operation standard rehabilitation − 41 days after operation fast-track rehabilitation = 30 days difference)