Jacob, Louis
Kostev, Karel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2124-7227
Article History
Received: 22 December 2018
Accepted: 1 February 2019
First Online: 9 February 2019
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: Both authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
: German law allows the use of anonymous electronic medical records for research purposes under certain conditions. According to this legislation, it is not necessary to obtain informed consent from patients or approval from a medical ethics committee for this type of observational study that contains no directly identifiable data. Because patients were only queried as aggregates and no protected health information was available for queries, no IRB approval was required for the use of this database or the completion of this study.