Fig. 4
Box-and-whisker plot showing the distribution of VAS pain scores and improvement of VAS pain scores at the various study timepoints. For each box-and-whisker plot, the middle line of the box is the median, the top line of the box is the 75th percentile, the bottom line of the box is the 25th percentile, the top whisker is the 90th percentile, the bottom whisker is the 10th percentile, and the dots are individual patients beyond the 10th and 90th percentile, whereby each dot may actually be more than one dot superimposed, if two or more patients had the same score. a The raw VAS scores at each timepoint. b The improvement of the patients’ VAS scores from pre-op to the follow-up timepoint indicated. Note that an “improvement” of 0 means the follow-up score was the same as the pre-op, larger numbers indicate more improvement since pre-op, and negative numbers would mean that the patient was worse at follow-up. (For clarification, the median improvement of VAS at 12 months was 3)