During the study, the occurrence of adverse events was statistically evaluated with the help of sequential methods (restricted procedure) (Whitehead, 1997) using a significance level of 0.2 (two sided) and a power of 0.8 using the software PEST (distributed by Whitehead). During the study, three safety analyses were conducted. The first analysis was conducted after the complete documentation of the first 3 months of the first 50 randomized patients, the second analysis was performed with the first 100 patients, and the third and last analysis was performed with the first 150 patients. The safety analyses were conducted by a statistician whowas not involved in the design and analysis of this trial, using coded group labels ‘‘A’’ and ‘‘B,’’ and blinded to which were the real therapy groups.