Integrity of blinding
Participant blinding was deemed successful as the treatment group was not revealed to them in any way. In total, 51% of participants incorrectly predicted the treatment group or responded, “don’t know”. The remaining 49% of participants, although correctly predicted their treatment groups, based their decision primarily on guesswork or symptom assessment, and their confidence for correctly predicting the group was not greater than merely chance [Mean ± SD (48% ± 19%)]. Outcome assessor blinding was highly successful, with correct prediction being only 18%, and 58% of responses being “don’t know”.