Comparative analysis
We executed the bivariate comparative analysis considering two post hoc direct exploratory comparisons (binary): perioperative vs baseline (t1 vs t0), extended follow-up vs baseline (t2 vs t0). We tested the differences with the Wilcoxon signed rank test for dependent numerical measures and with McNemar’s exact test for dependent categorical measures. We did not observe normality of the numerical data, so we opted for these non-parametric methods.