Acknowledgements
We appreciate the cooperation of Dr. Tadashi Yasuda (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital); Dr. Yoshinobu Watanabe (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Teikyo University School of Medicine); Dr. Goro Tajima and Dr. Minoru Doita (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Iwate Medical University School of Medicine); and Dr. Yoshio Kaji and Dr. Tetsuji Yamamoto (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Kagawa University School of Medicine) for assistance in completing the multicenter clinical trial. We appreciate the cooperation of Yasuko Kimura, Satoru Kasahara, Kyoko Hazama, and Tetsuo Seki (Translational Research Center for Medical Innovation, Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe) for coordinating the clinical trial and managing the data. We also express our gratitude to Yu Okada and Kyoko Tanizawa (Translational Research Center for Medical Innovation, Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe) for conducting the statistical analysis. We sincerely thank the clinical trial coordinators and physicians-in-charge of patient care at all institutes involved in this clinical trial.