Fig. 1

Total recruitment and follow-up accrual curves for the primary and all early follow-up endpoints at times \(d_{1},d_{2},\dots ,d_{r},\dots ,d_{s}\) for (a) the fixed rate recruitment model, b the linearly increasing rate recruitment model and (c) the linearly decreasing rate recruitment model. With annotation showing numbers of participants recruited \(N_{0}\) and with follow-up data at \(N_{1},N_{2},\dots ,N_{r},\dots ,N_{s}\) at times t, set such that \(N_{0}\) is the same for each setting