Cost of dietary programme per month
In the base-case calculation, we assume that all patients in the study who did not discontinue all treatment continue with a calorie-reduced diet for the whole 12-month period. We have assumed that a patient participating in the programme for 12 months will visit the GP twice (at the start of the programme and in month 3) and the dietitian four times (baseline, months 3, 6 and 12). As these costs are common to both arms they have no bearing on the cost-effectiveness evaluation.