2.8. Data Analysis
Statistical procedures were performed with STATISTICA 13.1 (TIBCO Software Inc., Tulsa, OK, USA). Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations or means with 95% confidence interval) were generated for continuous variables. For discrete variables, the number of patients and percentages are given. Normality of distribution was tested with the Shapiro-Wilk test. The U-Mann Whitney test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used to test inter-group differences. The repeated measures ANOVA was used to verify if any significant differences were found between variables over time. Associations were tested by Spearman’s correlation coefficients. The significance level was set at 