About the Authors

Beate Wieseler

beate.wieseler@iqwig.de

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Natalia Wolfram

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Natalie McGauran

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Michaela F. Kerekes

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Volker Vervölgyi

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Petra Kohlepp

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Marloes Kamphuis

Affiliation Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany

Ulrich Grouven

Affiliations Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Cologne, Germany, Hanover Medical School, Hanover, Germany

Competing Interests

All authors are employees of the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG). To produce unbiased HTA reports, the Institute depends on access to all of the relevant data on the topic under investigation. The authors therefore support public access to clinical study reports.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BW . Analyzed the data: VV UG . Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: NM BW NW . Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: BW NW NM MFK VV PK MK UG. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: BW NW NM MFK VV PK MK UG. Agree with manuscript results and conclusions: BW NW NM MFK VV PK MK UG. Extracted and coded the data: MFK NW PK. Checked the data and codings: MFK NW VV PK MK.