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Article History

Received: 18 February 2021

Revised: 24 May 2021

Accepted: 14 June 2021

First Online: 24 June 2021

Declarations

:

: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Aichi Medical University Hospital (approval No. 2020–138) and followed the tenets of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

: The IRB 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 the Ministry of Health, Labour, 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 prior to the study. Nevertheless, at the request of the IRB, we published an outline of the study, which is available for public viewing on the Aichi Medical University Hospital website. This public posting also allowed patients the opportunity to decline participation, although none of the patients did so. Personal identifiers were removed from all records before data analysis.

: All authors agreed with the publication of this paper.

: The authors declare no competing interests.