Sabundayo, Maria Suzanne
Kakizaki, Hirohiko
Takahashi, Yasuhiro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1363-2870
Article History
Received: 23 August 2017
Revised: 8 November 2017
Accepted: 11 December 2017
First Online: 19 January 2018
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: All authors have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge, or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
: All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.
: The Institutional Review Board granted a waiver of informed consent for this study based on the ethical guidelines for medical and health research involving human subjects established by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. The waiver was granted because the study was a retrospective chart review, not an interventional study, and because it was difficult to obtain consent from patients who had been treated several years ago. Nevertheless, at the request of the Institutional Review Board, we published an outline of the study, available for public viewing, on the Aichi Medical University website; this also gave patients the opportunity to decline participation in the study. None of the patients declined to participate. Personal identifiers were removed from the records prior to data analysis.
: None.