∗Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of South China Structural Heart Disease, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, China

†Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China

‡Department of Anesthesiology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

§Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

||School of Biomedical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China

¶Department of Pathology, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China

#Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

Address reprint requests to Guanhua Li, MD, PhD, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of South China Structural Heart Disease, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, No.106, Zhongshan Er Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, 510080, China. E-mail: [email protected]Co-correspondence: Yu Zhang, MD, PhD, Department of Pathology, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, No.111, Dade Road, Guangzhou, China. E-mail: [email protected]

Received 28 December, 2021

Revised 19 January, 2022

Accepted 25 March, 2022

JL, ZY, and JZ contributed equally to this work.

Authors’ contributions: GL designed the study; JL collected and prepared the data; ZY analyzed the clinical data; ZZ, ZL, and YZ performed the experiments; YZ and GL drafted and reviewed the manuscript. Each author reviewed and approved the manuscript.

This study was supported by grants from the Medical Scientific Research Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (Grant No. A2021433), the Traditional Chinese Medicine Bureau of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 20212071), and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant No. 2021A1515010280).

Ethical approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the institutional ethical committee (Reference number: SY-2018-362) and written informed consents were provided by all patients before study participation.

The authors report no conflicts of interests.

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request at [email protected].