'Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists (RCOG)'
Abstract
The two study protocols are published in this issue Colorectal Disease: FALCON, a
multicentre randomised controlled trial of strategies to reduce surgical site infection, and
AFAR, a predictive model of atrial fibrillation after colonic resection. Both are exemplars of excellent research design that surgeon researchers should seek to emulate. Trial statisticians
were involved at an early stage and the protocols have been through several rounds of peer
review by trial methodologists, prior to being funded by the National Institute for Health
Research (NIHR). In this article we address the important question of sample size
calculations and how they should be approached for these very different forms of study