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Article History

Received: 19 November 2024

Accepted: 18 February 2025

First Online: 28 July 2025

Declarations

:

: Necessary permissions were obtained from both Mater Dei Hospital and the University of Malta. The study was submitted to and approved by the University of Malta Research Ethics Committee and the Mater Dei Hospital Data Protection Office. The ethics approval reference number is FEMA-2023–00285. The study complied with all relevant national and institutional data protection regulations, ensuring the confidentiality and security of patient-sensitive information.Informed consent was waived as the study involved retrospective analysis of de-identified data, and this waiver was approved by the University of Malta Research Ethics Committee. To ensure privacy, tokenisation was applied to the dataset prior to analysis, replacing sensitive patient information with non-sensitive equivalents, making patients unrecognisable. This process adhered to GDPR guidelines and ensured compliance with ethical standards for data use in research.

: Consent for publication was obtained.

: The authors declare no competing interests.