About the Authors

Yoshan Moodley

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – original draft

moodleyyo@ukzn.ac.za

Affiliations Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Group, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa

Jacqueline van Wyk

Roles Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Health Sciences Education, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, School of Clinical Medicine, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Yuming Ning

Roles Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States of America

Steven Wexner

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Ellen Leifer Shulman and Steven Shulman Digestive Disease Center, Cleveland Clinic Florida, Weston, Florida, United States of America

Cathrine Gounden

Roles Data curation, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Group, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Vasudevan Naidoo

Roles Data curation, Resources, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Group, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Shakeel Kader

Roles Formal analysis, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Group, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Alfred I. Neugut

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States of America

Ravi P. Kiran

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States of America

Competing Interests

I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Dr. Neugut has consulted for Otsuka, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, United Biosource Corp, Value Analytics, Hospira, and serves on the medical advisory board of EHE Intl. Dr. Neugut also has grant support from Otsuka. The other authors do not report any conflicts of interest related to this research. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.