∗Department of Surgery, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
†Institute for Pathology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
‡Institute for Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
§Institute of Pathology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Reprints: Güralp O. Ceyhan, MD, Department of Surgery, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, Ismaninger Str. 22, D-81675 Munich, Germany. E-mail: gueralp.ceyhan@tum.de.
Ihsan Ekin Demir and Carsten Jäger contributed equally to this manuscript.
IED, CJ, HF, and GOC designed the study. IED and CJ performed the database search and extraction of articles. All authors contributed to the drafting of the manuscript. AMS, BK, IE, and WW performed the pathological analyses. SS, ET, RS, FS, LC critically revised the manuscript. LS critically assessed the statistical analysis and made corrections. All authors agreed on the submission of the manuscript.
The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.
Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's Web site (www.annalsofsurgery.com).
