Varpe 2011.

Methods	Cohort Prospective Longitudinal
Participants	65 patients, APE 21, AR 44. Patients with histologically proven rectal cancer invited to participate.
Interventions	Quality of life assessment with RAND‐36
Outcomes	Quality of life
Notes	Evidence level: 2B. Not stated: Gender, tumour grade, tumour and anastomotic distance from anal verge; pouch, adjuvant treatment.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk	Prospective, longitudinal cohort study. Not all eligible patients accepted to participate.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) Anterior resection or abdominoperineal resection	High risk	Blinding not possible due to surgical therapy.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) Quality of life	Low risk	All included patients completed the study.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All QoL data reported.