Statistical Methods
Descriptive statistics were expressed as mean, standard deviation (SD),
median, minimum, and maximum for continuous data; and as count and
proportion for categorical data. Categorical data were analysed with the
Chi-Square or Fisher’s exact tests. The distribution normality of the
continuous variables was calculated with the Shapiro-Wilk test. We
analysed the two groups with Independent Samples T test for the normally
distributed variables and with the Mann-Whitney U Test for the
non-normally distributed variables. We compared the more than two groups
with One-way ANOVA for the normally distributed variables and with the
Kruskal-Wallis test for the non-normally distributed variables; post-hoc
multiple comparison analysis was performed with significant values that
have been adjusted by the Bonferroni correction. Pearson’s or Spearman’s
correlation analysis was used to find the relationship between
continuous variables, depending on the distribution.
Statistical analyses were performed using the IBM SPSS v.24 for Windows
software and was reported with 95% confidence intervals. Values of
p<0.05 were considered significant