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Article History

Received: 25 October 2022

Accepted: 18 May 2023

First Online: 22 June 2023

Declarations

:

: All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects and neither experimental interventions nor pharmacological or non-pharmacological treatments were under investigation. All data collected come from a questionnaire focusing on patients’ opinions and administered anonymously, i.e., the patients filled it out from technological devices provided by the hospital staff without entering their name, surname, specific biometric data and other sensitive data such as email addresses or telephone numbers. The Italian regulation, as published on the institutional website of the privacy guarantor (link to guidelines: ExternalRef removed, “Guidelines on processing personal data to perform customer satisfaction surveys in the health care sector”, published in Italy´s Official Journal No. 120 of 25 May 2011), indicates that if the questionnaire guarantees anonymity, the processing of the information collected does not fall under in the application of the legislation on the protection of personal data, hence the study comes out of the legislation on personal processing data. Given these elements, the approval of an ethics committee or an institutional review board is deemed unnecessary according to national legislation.

: Not applicable.

: The funding body was not involved in the definition of the project, data collection and the analysis of the data. Nicola Ughi (outside this paper): ROCHE, PFIZER, ALFASIGMA, ABBVIE, JANSSEN, GALAPAGOS, BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB. Antonella Adinolfi (outside this paper): Janseen, BMS. Rest of the authors have no Conflict of interest to declare.