About the Authors

Hideya Takeuchi

Contributed equally to this work with: Hideya Takeuchi, Hirohumi Kawanaka

t3996a@yahoo.co.jp

Affiliation Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Hirohumi Kawanaka

Contributed equally to this work with: Hideya Takeuchi, Hirohumi Kawanaka

Affiliations Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan, Clinical Research Institute, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Seiichi Fukuyama

Affiliation Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Nobuhide Kubo

Affiliation Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Shoji Hiroshige

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Tokujiro Yano

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Department of Surgery, National Hospital Organization Beppu Medical Center, Beppu, Oita, Japan

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: HT. Data curation: HT HK. Formal analysis: HT HK TY. Funding acquisition: HK. Investigation: HT SF. Methodology: SH. Project administration: NK. Resources: HT. Software: SF. Supervision: HT. Validation: HT HK TY. Visualization: HT. Writing – original draft: HT. Writing – review & editing: HT.