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Article History

Accepted: 28 January 2021

First Online: 17 February 2021

Compliance with ethical standards

:

: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

: The study was exempt from approval from the Ethics Committee. It was conducted in conformity with the regulations for data management of the Regional Health Authority of Emilia-Romagna, and with the Italian Code of conduct and professional practice applied to processing of personal data for statistical and scientific purposes (art. 20–21, legislative decree 196/2003; ExternalRef removed) published in the Official Journal no. 190 of August 14, 2004, which explicitly exempts the need for approval from the Ethics Committee when using anonymous data (Preamble number 8). In Italy, anonymous administrative data-gathering is subject to the law Protection of individuals and other subjects with regard to the processing of personal data, Act no. 675 of 31.12.1996 (amended by Legislative Decree no. 123 of 09.05.1997, no. 255 of 28.07.1997, no. 135 of 08.05.1998, no. 171 of 13.05.1998, no. 389 of 6.11.1998, no. 51 of 26.02.1999, no. 135 of 11.05.1999, no. 281 of 30.07.1999, no. 282 of 30.07.1999 and no. 467 of 28.12.2001) (ExternalRef removed).

: Patients enrolled in the PIRP project are asked to provide written consent to use their anonymized data.

: The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the current regulations on privacy, but are available in anonymized form from the corresponding author on reasonable request.