Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Ms. Kaori Une for her assistance with data
management; Ms. Yuko Fujita, Ms. Akane Kikuchi, Ms. Sayumi Mekaru, and
Ms. Hitomi Zukeran, all clinical research coordinators for data
collection from medical records; and Ms. Takako Okumura and Ms. Kayo
Chinen for study management. We are also indebted to the data managers
of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (Ms. Makiko Ohtorii, Ms. Ai
Sunagawa, Ms. Kaori Yamamoto, Ms. Sachiko Kitamura, Ms. Hirono Saito,
and Ms. Saeko Nagano) for the data management and statistical analyses.