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Article History

Received: 17 December 2021

Revised: 22 July 2022

Accepted: 26 July 2022

First Online: 6 August 2022

Ethical approval

: The Italian National Information System databases include the Hospital Discharge Form database, the Italian Census database, and the National Mortality database, which are official, anonymised Ministerial Health information systems. All patient information is centrally anonymised and available to authorised institutions to be used for epidemiological and/or health organisation studies without any further authorisations. Hence, ethics committee approval was not required. Personal data treatments are carried out in compliance with the current rules set out in EU Regulation 2016/679 and the current legislation on the Protection of Personal Data set out in Legislative Decree 101/2018 as well as Legislative Decree 196/2003 and subsequent amendments and additions. Our study used statistical and aggregate data that were shared according to the current deontological rules for the processing National Statistical System data for scientific research purposes, in accordance with the provisions of art 5 ter of Legislative Decree 33 /2013 as amended by Legislative Decree 97/2016 and Legislative Decree 101/2018.

: The authors declare no competing interests.

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