Statistics
All analyses were done using SPSS, version 22.0 (IBM Corp. Armonk, NY,
USA), MedCalc Statistical Software, version 19.5 (MedCalc Software Ltd,
Ostend, Belgium) and GraphPad Prism 8.0(GraphPad Software, San Diego,
CA, USA). Continuous variables were reported as mean ± SD or as median
(IQR) after testing their normal distribution using the
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For two-group comparisons, the independent
samples t-test was used for normally distributed data, and the
Mann-Whitney test was used for non-normally distributed data. For the
comparison of multi-group, one-way analysis of variance and the
Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze normally and non-normally
distributed data. Categorical data are summarized using number
(percentage), and were compared using the chi-square or Fisher’s exact
test. Spearman’s rank correlation was applied to determine the
correlation between variables. The area under the receiver operating
characteristic (ROC) curve was calculated to evaluate the tested
parameters’ diagnostic and prognostic value and a value of P
<0.05 was considered statistically significant.