Document is current

Article History

Received: 22 May 2025

Accepted: 8 July 2026

First Online: 11 July 2026

Declarations

:

: This study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki and received ethical approval from the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) of both Sidra Medicine (SIDRA-IRB-1801339) and Hamad Bin Khalifa University (QBRI-IRB-2024-6). It was conducted in accordance with national and institutional guidelines for retrospective research, with strict measures to ensure patient confidentiality and data privacy. All data were fully anonymised prior to analysis by a designated member of the original research team at Sidra Medicine with authorised access to the clinical records system; anonymisation involved removal of all direct identifiers (name, date of birth, medical record number, address, and contact details) and replacement with unique study identifiers. The anonymised dataset was stored on Sidra Medicine’s REDCap platform with access restricted to named investigators on the IRB protocol. Individual informed consent was not required for this study. The waiver of informed consent was formally granted by both IRBs on the basis of three criteria consistent with Article 9(2)(j) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework and the Sidra Medicine Research Ethics Policy for retrospective research: (i) the data had already been collected under a primary consented research protocol, such that participants had previously provided consent for the use of their clinical data in research; (ii) the study involved no additional contact with or intervention on participants; and (iii) all data were fully de-identified prior to analysis, eliminating any risk of individual identification.

: All authors read the manuscript and provided their consent for publication.

: The authors declare no competing interests.