Article History
Received: 3 December 2018
Accepted: 27 June 2019
First Online: 6 July 2019
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: This study was approved by the institutional review board of the Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Taiwan (No. B10104020), and was carried out in accordance with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) was initially available for research purposes after a successful application from the National Health Insurance Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare. After a change in 2016, the NHIRD is currently regulated by the Data Science Centre of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan. The NHIRD files contain de-identified secondary data, the need for informed consent from individual subjects was waived.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.