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Article History

Received: 4 September 2019

Accepted: 14 January 2020

First Online: 28 January 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Ethics committee or institutional review board approval and informed consent were not necessary because the authors used the data already collected at the beginning of the study, and the data were analyzed anonymously through a standardized methodology according to the Italian national privacy law (national legislative decree on privacy policy no. 196/30 June 2003). The Department of Epidemiology of the Lazio Regional Health Service is the regional referral center for epidemiological research and it has full access to anonymized health information systems. Data are routinely collected by the health information system from the Regional Department of the Lazio Regional Health Service, which anonymized all the records prior to the analysis performed by our Department of Epidemiology of the Lazio Regional Health Service. The authors did not anonymize the data. The linkage method used a unique anonymous patient identifier deriving from information on persons’ names, date and place of birth, and gender, according to Italian privacy legislation. Individuals cannot be identified directly or through identifiers, and the results are shown in aggregate form.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.