2.1. Statistical analysis
SPSS Statistics (v.15.0; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used to perform statistical analyses. Numerical data were presented as means ± standard deviation and medians (interquartile range). Frequency data were presented as n and %. The normal distribution of data was determined by the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. The Mann–Whitney U test and Studentt test were used to analyze comparisons between the two groups for numerical data. Homogeneity of the variance was tested using the Levene test. The mean and median differences were presented in a 95% confidence interval. The study was planned as a superiority trial, and all the analyses were performed according to the principle of intention to treat. All the hypotheses were constructed as two tailed, and an alpha critical value of 0.05 was accepted as significant. For this study, the sample size was calculated using the G*power software(v.3.1).In a similar study conducted earlier, it was found that the average VAS scores for pre- and posttreatment were 82.7 and 36.3, respectively, achieving the effect size of greater than one12. In this study, we aimed to reach at least 45 people in each group and 90 people in total in order to obtain a moderate effect size (d =0.50) by predicting a smaller effect size.