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Article History

Received: 2 January 2023

Accepted: 29 March 2023

First Online: 6 April 2023

Declarations

:

: The study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the declaration of Helsinki. Further, all methods were conducted in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. According to the Professional Code of Conduct for Physicians of the North Rhine Medical Association, an ethics vote is not necessary for this study, as it is an exclusively retrospective data analysis of population-based cancer registry data.Footnote removed The Professional Code of Conduct for Physicians was approved by the supervisory authority of the state North Rhine-Westphalia and has legal status on the basis of the law for health care profession (“Heilberufsgesetz”) of the state North Rhine-Westphalia.Footnote removed In accordance with this regulation, the Ethics Committee of the North Rhine Medical Association was not asked for their vote concerning this study.All individual-related data required for the analysis were pseudonymised. All data management and analyses were conducted by staff members of the Cancer Registry of North Rhine-Westphalia, without any possibilities for individual identification. Informed consent of individuals in this population-based study is not necessary according to state legislation (LKRG NRW).Footnote removed The LKRG NRW states that cancer registration is mandatory and subjects may not contradict storage of pseudonymised tumor-related data recorded in the cancer registry, nor may they contradict the use of these data for research analyses.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.