Matsuda, Hiromichi
Kabata, Yoshiaki
Takahashi, Yasuhiro
Hanzawa, Yuri
Nakano, Tadashi
Article History
Received: 24 September 2019
Revised: 2 February 2020
Accepted: 12 February 2020
First Online: 26 February 2020
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
: 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 Jikei Medical University institutional review board (IRB) approved this study (No. 30-365), and the study followed the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. The IRB granted a waiver of informed consent for this study on the basis of the ethics 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 as the study was a retrospective chart review, not an interventional study. The IRB requested that we present an outlined description of this study to the public via a notice board in our institution, to provide an additional opportunity for patients to refuse participation in the study before patient records were de-identified and made anonymous. None of the patients declined participation.