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Fig. 4 | Patient Safety in Surgery

Fig. 4

From: Empty polyetheretherketone (PEEK) cages in anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion (ACDF) show slow radiographic fusion that reduces clinical improvement: results from the prospective multicenter “PIERCE-PEEK” study

Fig. 4

Box-and-whisker plot of the VAS pain scores. The X-axis shows the four data-collection timepoints. The Y-axis shows the full range of possible scores of the VAS pain scale. For each of the four box-and-whisker plots, the middle line of the box is the median VAS pain score for the study sample, the top bar of the box is the 75th percentile, the bottom bar of the box is the 25th percentile, the top whisker is the 90th percentile, the bottom whisker is the 10th percentile, and the dots (if any) are the scores of individual outlier patients outside the 10th to 90th percentiles, but each dot may actually be more than one dot (theoretically, up to 29), overlapping. (Note: where whisker bars are missing, they are equal to the end of the box. Also, the median at the 18-month follow-up was equal to the 25th percentile of 1.)

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