Scarinci, E.
Tropea, A.
Notaristefano, G.
Arena, V.
Alesiani, O.
Fabozzi, S. M.
Lanzone, A.
Apa, R.
Article History
Received: 12 January 2019
Accepted: 19 March 2019
First Online: 25 March 2019
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: All authors have nothing to declare.
: The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)). A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g., “salami-publishing”). No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions. No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given [this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased], quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted. Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities—tacitly or explicitly—at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted. Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results. Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript. Adding and/or deleting authors and/or changing the order of authors at revision stage may be justifiably warranted. A letter must accompany the revised manuscript to explain the reason for the change(s) and the contribution role(s) of the added and/or deleted author(s). Further documentation may be required to support your request. Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or independent body and/or when there is agreement between all authors. Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential proprietary data is excluded.
: The protocol was approved by the institutional review board of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome and informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.