Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan.

Reprint requests: Akio Oishi, MD, PhD, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Nagasaki University, Sakamoto 1-7-1, Nagasaki 852-8102, Japan; e-mail: [email protected]

Supported by a grant-in-aid for scientific research (no. 22K09793) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.

A. Oishi received personal fees from Bayer Yakuhin, Ltd (Osaka, Japan), Santen Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd (Tokyo, Japan), and Novartis Pharma K.K. (Tokyo, Japan). T. Kitaoka received personal fees from Bayer Yakuhin, Ltd. (Osaka, Japan), Novartis Pharma K.K. (Tokyo, Japan), and Santen Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd (Tokyo, Japan) and grants from Santen Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd (Tokyo, Japan).

Property interest: In consideration of the journal RETINA taking action in reviewing and editing my (our) submission, which represents an original article (the copyright of which is held solely by the undersigned), the author(s) undersigned hereby transfers, assigns, or otherwise conveys all copyright ownership to the Ophthalmic Communications Society, Inc in the event that such work is published in the journal RETINA. Manuscripts authored by U.S. government employees are exempted from the requirement of the preceding paragraph if they constitute works of the U.S. government. Under copyright law, a work of authorship prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. government as part of that person's official duties is in the public domain and is not subject to copyright protection.

Access to data and data analysis: A. Machida had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of data analysis.