Safe implementation of robotic gastrectomy for gastric cancer under the requirements for universal health insurance coverage: a retrospective cohort study using a nationwide registry database in Japan.

"Declarations Conflict of interestH.Y., and H.M. are affiliated with the Department of Healthcare Quality Assessment at the University of Tokyo, which is a social collaboration department supported by grants from NCD, Johnson & Johnson K.K., and Nipro Co. The remaining authors have no commercial association with or financial involvement that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. K.S. has been funded by Sysmex, Co. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Intelligence, Fujita Health University. T.T. and I.U. have also been funded by Medicaroid, Inc. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Technology, Fujita Health University. K.S. received advisory fees from Medicaroid, Inc., outside of the submitted work. I.U. received lecture fees from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., outside of the submitted work. This study was funded by Intuitive Surgical Sarl for administrative support provided by EP-CRSU Co., Ltd. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication. Ethical approvalAll procedures were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the respective committees on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and later versions. The study was approved by the institutional review boards of all participating institutes. The requirement for informed consent was waived because the customized database contained de-identified and anonymized data. Conflict of interest H.Y., and H.M. are affiliated with the Department of Healthcare Quality Assessment at the University of Tokyo, which is a social collaboration department supported by grants from NCD, Johnson & Johnson K.K., and Nipro Co. The remaining authors have no commercial association with or financial involvement that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. K.S. has been funded by Sysmex, Co. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Intelligence, Fujita Health University. T.T. and I.U. have also been funded by Medicaroid, Inc. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Technology, Fujita Health University. K.S. received advisory fees from Medicaroid, Inc., outside of the submitted work. I.U. received lecture fees from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., outside of the submitted work. This study was funded by Intuitive Surgical Sarl for administrative support provided by EP-CRSU Co., Ltd. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication."

"The authors thank all data managers and hospitals for participating in the NCD project and for their great effort in entering the data. We also thank the working members of the NCD Committee of the JSES and the Database Committee of the JSGS. This study was supported by the JSES. We thank Mr. Miyoshi Sakai and Ms. Chie Yamamoto of EP‐CRSU Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) for their dedicated administrative support. The authors are indebted to Editage (http://www.editage.com) for English language editing. Declarations: Conflict of interestH.Y., and H.M. are affiliated with the Department of Healthcare Quality Assessment at the University of Tokyo, which is a social collaboration department supported by grants from NCD, Johnson & Johnson K.K., and Nipro Co. The remaining authors have no commercial association with or financial involvement that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. K.S. has been funded by Sysmex, Co. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Intelligence, Fujita Health University. T.T. and I.U. have also been funded by Medicaroid, Inc. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Technology, Fujita Health University. K.S. received advisory fees from Medicaroid, Inc., outside of the submitted work. I.U. received lecture fees from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., outside of the submitted work. This study was funded by Intuitive Surgical Sarl for administrative support provided by EP-CRSU Co., Ltd. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication.: Ethical approvalAll procedures were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the respective committees on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and later versions. The study was approved by the institutional review boards of all participating institutes. The requirement for informed consent was waived because the customized database contained de-identified and anonymized data. Conflict of interest: H.Y., and H.M. are affiliated with the Department of Healthcare Quality Assessment at the University of Tokyo, which is a social collaboration department supported by grants from NCD, Johnson & Johnson K.K., and Nipro Co. The remaining authors have no commercial association with or financial involvement that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. K.S. has been funded by Sysmex, Co. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Intelligence, Fujita Health University. T.T. and I.U. have also been funded by Medicaroid, Inc. in relation to the Collaborative Laboratory for Research and Development in Advanced Surgical Technology, Fujita Health University. K.S. received advisory fees from Medicaroid, Inc., outside of the submitted work. I.U. received lecture fees from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., outside of the submitted work. This study was funded by Intuitive Surgical Sarl for administrative support provided by EP-CRSU Co., Ltd. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication."