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Article History

Received: 12 August 2021

Accepted: 29 January 2022

First Online: 1 March 2022

Declarations

:

: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Saneikai Tsukazaki Hospital (IRB No. 211027) and followed the tenets of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The IRB granted a waiver of informed consent for this study on the basis of the ethical guidelines for medical and health research involving human subjects established by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. The waiver was granted because the study was a retrospective chart review, not an interventional study, and because it was difficult to obtain consent from patients who had been treated several years prior to the study. Nevertheless, at the request of the IRB we published an outline of the study, which is available for public viewing on the Saneikai Tsukazaki Hospital website. This public posting also gave patients the opportunity to decline participation, although none of the patients did so. Personal identifiers were removed from all records prior to data analysis.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.