Footnotes

• Collaborators Gruppo InterSERT di Collaborazione Scientifica (GICS): V Arcarese, C Arzillo, L Benigna, N Bersani, P Bersani, C Biasin, C Bossi, A Bottazzo, A Bove, E Caccamo, S Cancian, F Cantanchin, D Cantiero, G Canzian, D Cargnelutti, D Casalboni, R Casarini, M Cibin, P Civitelli, T Cozzi, L De Cecco, R Del Zotto, F Dersini, I Duranti, M Fadelli, E Favero, N Fontana, A Franceschini, M Gaiga, M Gardiolo, N Gentile, D Gervino, N Ghezzo, M A Giacomin, H Kashanpour, M Mazzo, D Meneghello, C Mihalcea, E Milan, M Montresor, E Moratti, A Pani, V Pavani, P Pellachin, F Peroni, M Piazza, M Pieri, D Prosa, M Residori, P Righetti, M A Ripoli, P Riscica, C Rizza, V Rizzetto, A Rossi, A Rovea, A Ruffato, C Ruzziconi, R Sabbion, E Santo, M Scarzella, N Sembianti, P Simonetto, C Smacchia, M Stellato, C Stimolo, L Suardi, A Vaiana, V Zavan, E Zerbetto, M Zerman.

• Contributors FL: conception and design of the study, review of the literature, review and editing of the manuscript. FV: design of the study, data collection, review and editing of the manuscript. ST: conception and design of the study, review of the literature, statistical analysis, writing the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

• Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

• Competing interests None declared.

• Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

• Patient consent for publication Not required.

• Ethics approval The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Verona University Hospital, Verona, Italy (approval ID 533CESC).

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.