Yasutaka Tashiro, Ken Okazaki, Koji Murakami, Hirokazu Matsubara, Kanji Osaki, Yukihide Iwamoto, Yasuharu Nakashima
Yasutaka Tashiro, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
Yasutaka Tashiro, Ken Okazaki, Koji Murakami, Hirokazu Matsubara, Kanji Osaki, Yukihide Iwamoto, Yasuharu Nakashima, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan
Author contributions: Tashiro Y designed the study, performed surgeries and followed up patients; he analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript; Okazaki K assisted designing the study, performed surgeries and followed up patients; he revised the manuscript; Murakami K performed subjective and objective data collection, assisted data analysis and evaluation; Matsubara H and Osaki K performed kinematic data collection, assisted data analysis and evaluation; Iwamoto Y helped grant writing, directed all clinical aspects and co-supervised the entire research; Nakashima Y directed all clinical aspects and supervised the entire research.
Supported by JSPS Fellowships for Research Abroad, No. H27-787; and International Research Fund for Subsidy of Kyushu University School of Medicine Alumni.
Institutional review board statement: This study protocol was approved by the institutional review board (IRB ID: 24-108) of Kyushu University (3-1-1, Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan).
Informed consent statement: All subjects gave their informed consent before they were included to this study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yasutaka Tashiro, MD, PhD, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan.
11yasu@med.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-92-6425488 Fax: +81-92-6425507
Received: November 22, 2016
Peer-review started: November 23, 2016
First decision: February 17, 2017
Revised: February 23, 2017
Accepted: October 29, 2017
Article in press: October 29, 2017
Published online: December 18, 2017
Processing time: 390 Days and 22.7 Hours
