Article History
Received: 4 June 2022
Accepted: 21 June 2022
First Online: 12 July 2022
Declarations
:
: The authors have not disclosed any competing interests.
: The database used includes only anonymized data in compliance with the regulations of the applicable data protection laws. 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 Institutional Review Board approval was required for the use of this database or the completion of this study.