FACADE is prospective, randomised non-inferiority trial comparing traditional overnight hospital surveillance to discharge on the day of the surgery in patients who have undergone anterior cervical decompression and fusion.
FAÇADE is the first in our series of hopefully many more neurosurgical trials (stay tuned for more news to come in the near future!). FAÇADE_NEUROSURGERY is also a new frontier in the FICEBO initiative, as we are expending from orthopedics and traumatology to new disciplines. Another discipline to be revealed later this spring!
FAÇADE was launched at Helsinki University Hospital on June 7th, 2019 by Dr. Kimmo Lönnrot and he has gathered a group of young and ambitious researchers under his wings. The trial protocol for FAÇADE trial was just published in the BMJ Open (following the FICEBO tradition to publish our trial protocols in this journal: FIDELITY protocol, FIMPACT protocol, FISH protocol).
By the end of 2019, we had recruited a total of 24 of the required 104 subjects. To enhance the recruitment phase, we have opened new trial centres at the Oulu and Turku University Hospitals and both centres have already recruited their first patients. If the current recruitment pace persists, we expect to achieve our target sample size by the end of year 2020, which would mean that the trial will be completed by the end of summer 2021.