PMC

Fig 1 Flowchart of participants through study

Fig 2 Kaplan-Meier estimate of time to complete recovery, determined by phone follow-up at six weeks, three months, and 12 months. Participants were interviewed to establish if they had recovered (no pain for one month AND no disability for one month AND returned to previous work status for one month). If they had recovered they were asked to nominate start date of one month period. This date was used to determine time to recovery. Curves are not smoothed but appear so because of large sample size