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Article History

Received: 16 June 2019

Accepted: 31 January 2020

First Online: 3 March 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The study was reviewed by an independent ethics committee as required by the local authority in each country. In Germany, ethics approval was received from the hospital Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg on 2 September 2016. In Spain, ethics approval was received from the hospital CEIC Hospital Clínico San Carlos on 22 July 2016. For the UK, France and Italy, the data collection was completely anonymized and retrospective, therefore ethics approval was not required for these data. Specifically, in the UK, the data collection was completely anonymized and retrospective and the research did not require National Health Service Research Ethics Committee (NHS REC) approval. In Italy, according to the Italian legislation, Regolamenta-di-funzionamento- del-comutato-Etico-Independente, the study did not require any ethics committee notification nor ethics committee approval. For France, the study did not fall within the scope of the Advisory Committee on the Processing of Information in Health-related Research (CCTIRS), as the study was collecting completely anonymous data with no possibility to retrieve patient’s identity. For all countries, informed consent was not required due to the de-identified and retrospective nature of the data.

: Not applicable.

: M-VM has received consulting fees from Amgen, Celgene, Janssen and Takeda. LF and NK are employees of Kantar Health, which received funding from Amgen to conduct this research. MI was an Amgen employee at the time of the study. CG and DN are Amgen employees and hold stocks. MC has received honoraria from Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Janssen and Takeda.