Patient flow through the study is presented in Fig. A (see online supplementary material). Out
of 124 eligible patients, 122 patients were included in this study. Six patients dropped out of
the study because they were not able to start the mobilisation intervention due to severe
medical complications (n=4) or withdrew before the intervention (n=2). Analyses were
performed using data for 55 patients in the pre-implementation period (traditional
mobilisation) and 61 patients in the post-implementation period (enforced mobilisation).
Baseline and peri-operative patient characteristics are shown in Table 1. The patients
in the pre-implementation period were similar to the patients in the post-implementation
period in terms of sex, smoking, co-morbidities, BMI, presurgical therapy and type of surgery.
Significant differences in age and baseline 6MWT score (% of predicted value) were found
between the groups; younger age and lower 6MWT score were observed in patients in the
post-implementation period compared with patients in the pre-implementation period.