Study population
The China Medical University Hospital–Clinical Research Data Repository
(CMUH–CRDR) was established by the Big Data Center of CMUH, which
contains the medical records of 2,873,887 patients who sought care in
CMUH between 2003 and 2018. The CMUH–CRDR has been described in greater
detail in previous articles.27-29 All patients
enrolled in the CMUH–CRDR were followed up until December 31, 2018, or
death, whichever occurred earlier. This study was approved with waived
informed consent by the Big Data Center of CMUH and the Research Ethical
Committee/Institutional Review Board of CMUH (CMUH105-REC3-068).
In this retrospective cohort study, we identified 2,789 patients from
the CMUH–CRDR records who underwent 2,834 midurethral sling surgery
procedures between 2003 and 2018. Next, we excluded operations without
SUI diagnosis records during the index visit or within six months prior
to the procedure date, patients whose surgical visits were not in the
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and patients who did not have
any surgical records or who did not have sling type records on their
surgical notes during the index visit (Figure 1 ;Supplementary Table 1 ). The final study population consisted of
1,961 female patients with a SUI diagnosis who underwent their first
midurethral sling surgery (index procedure) between 2003 and 2018 in the
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of CMUH.