Statistical methods:
Statistical analysis was descriptive, exploratory, and generally limited to frequency or summary statistics (e.g., means ± standard deviation or medians ± quartiles). Demographic information was summarized according to the type of data by descriptive statistics (n, mean, standard deviation, median, the difference between percentiles) or frequency distribution (n and %). The Student’s t-test was used for continuous variables, the analysis of variance for categorical variables, and the Pearson’s chi-square test for binominal variables. P values of <0.05 were accepted as significant.