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Article History

Received: 22 August 2022

Accepted: 20 November 2022

First Online: 2 January 2023

Declarations

:

: This study was considered exempt by the School Research Ethics Committee/Institutional Review Board at Queen’s University Belfast due to the anonymised and publicly available nature of HCUP-NIS data.

: The data underlying this study belong to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) data are publicly available for purchase through the AHRQ Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) ( ). Data are available to all researchers following a standard application process and signing of a Data Use Agreement. The authors paid a fee to access the NIS data used in this study (HCUP-NIS from 2008 to 2019) in accordance with the HCUP Central Distributor regulations ( ). Future researchers interested in purchasing and using HCUP databases will be required to complete the Web-based HCUP Data Use Agreement (DUA) Training ( ). Instructions for submitting an application for purchasing HCUP Databases can be found at  .

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

: All authors contributed to the study conception and design. NTQN and CO participated in research design, material preparation, data analysis, and writing the first version of the manuscript. NTNQ, CO, QEC, HQN, MQ, APW participated in revising the paper and carrying out the research. All listed authors agreed with the final version of the manuscript.