Comparability among the two treatment groups was
evaluated using Mann-Whitney U test for continuous variables
and Fisher’s exact test for categorical variables. Data are
presented as a median (interquartile range) for continuous
data and numbers (percentages) for categorical data. The
Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to compare differences
before and after treatment in each group. All statistical
assessments were two-sided and evaluated at the 0.05 level
of significant difference. Statistical analyses were performed
using SPSS 15.0 statistics software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL,
USA) and SAS 9.1