Ethical approval
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Chiba University Hospital (approval No. 4221) and the regional medical research review boards of all 24 hospitals participating in JUOG. The present study was conducted in accordance with ethical standards that promote and ensure respect and integrity for all human subjects and the Declaration of Helsinki. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant named guidelines and regulations.
Conflict of interest
Shinichi Sakamoto received honoraria from Janssen Pharmaceutical, K.K.. Shintaro Narita received honoraria from Janssen Pharmaceutical, and AstraZeneca K.K.. Masaki Shiota received honoraria from Janssen, AstraZeneca, Astellas, Sanofi, and Bayer K.K. and research funding support from Daiichi Sankyo.
Ethics Statement
The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Chiba University Hospital (approval No. 4221) and regional medical research review boards of all 24 hospitals.
Funding information
The present study was supported by grants from the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) (20H03813 to TI, and 20K09555 to SS).
Author Contribution
KS, TK, YM, YS, KH, HM, SN, JM, RM, TK, TS, RT, MS, JA, NT, SS, TK, ST, YY, YT and TK contributed to the design and implementation of the research, EK, KS, and SS to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript. HK, and TI conceived the original and supervised the project. KS and EK performed a survival tree analysis.
Acknowledgement
We wish to thank the members of the Japanese Urological Oncology Group (JUOG) for supporting the data collection and coordinating ethical approval. The rest of the authors who contributed to the study are listed in the Appendix. We also thank Akira Kurozumi from the department of Urology, Asahi General Hospital, Akinori Takei and Satoshi Fukasawa from the Department of Urology, Funabashi Municipal Medical Center, Koichiro Akakura, Hiroki Kito from the Department of Urology, Japan Community Health Care Organization, Hiroki Watanabe, Takahiro Shimizu, Satoshi Yamamoto and Kazuyoshi Nakamura from the Department of Urology, Kimitsu Chuo Hospital for supporting data collection and coordinating ethical approval. We extend special thanks to the Department of Urology, Chiba University School of Medicine, for their technical assistance. We also thank Lim Jasmine from the Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, for scientific advice.
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Japanese Urological Oncology Group (JUOG), but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study and so are not publicly available. The data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with the permission of the Japanese Urological Oncology Group (JUOG). The contact should be made to a corresponding author: Shinichi Sakamoto, E-mail: [email protected], Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuou-ku, Chiba, Japan.