We respect the right to privacy of all visitors to the MayoClinic.org website. We do not collect information that would personally identify you unless you choose to provide it. For example, if you choose to join the community at Mayo Clinic Online Community, the privacy policy and terms of use of that site apply. The personal information that you submit, such as on the appointment request form, is shared only with those people in the Mayo organization who need this information to respond to your question or request. Information submitted through Mayo Clinic's online forms may be collected to ensure technical functionality. It will also be utilized to address any inappropriate use of our website. We do not save personal information to use for other purposes, nor do we provide it to any other organizations.

We have taken reasonable steps to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of personally identifiable information that you may provide. You should understand, however, that electronic transmissions via the Internet are not necessarily secure from interception, and so we cannot absolutely guarantee the security or confidentiality of such transmissions.

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations or other valid legal processes, we will not share any personally identifiable information we receive from you with any parties outside of Mayo Clinic.

Newsletters

We require you to provide an email address to subscribe to a newsletter. If you subscribe, we may also use this email address to send you communications about other Mayo Clinic products and services. We may also share this email address with our third party email management vendor for purposes of delivering the newsletter to you; however, we do not share your email address with groups outside of Mayo Clinic for any marketing purposes.

Surveys

We occasionally survey visitors to our site. The information from these surveys is used in aggregated, de-identified form to help us understand the needs of our visitors so that we can improve our site. The information may be shared with third parties with whom we have a business relationship. We generally do not ask for information in surveys that would personally identify you; if we do request contact information for follow-up, you may decline to provide it. If survey respondents provide personal information (such as an email address) in a survey, it is shared only with those people who need to see it to respond to the question or request, or with third parties who perform data management services for our site. Those third parties have agreed to keep all data from surveys confidential.

IP Addresses

The Web server automatically collects the Internet Protocol address (IP) of the computers that access our site. An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer when you access the Internet. It is not truly personally identifiable information because many different individuals can access the Internet via the same computer. We use this information in aggregate form to understand how our site or advertisements from Mayo Clinic are being used and how we can better serve visitors.

Cookies

We collect information about visitors to our site using "cookies." (See definition on Webopedia.) We use persistent cookies to recognize a repeat visitor and offer the visitor a set of services or information requested in a previous visit. We use session cookies to track a visitor's path through our site during a visit, to help us understand how people use our site.

What we provide to third parties

We may share your personally identifiable information with third parties who we have engaged to help us provide the services. In each case, we will ensure that these third parties have agreed not to use or disclose your personal information except to help us provide the services.

Except as noted above for newsletters and surveys, Mayo Clinic does not provide any third party access to your IP address and email address.

We may provide third parties with aggregate statistics about our visitors, traffic patterns and related site information. These data reflect site-usage patterns gathered during visits to our website each month, but they do not contain behavioral or identifying information about any individual member unless that member has given us permission to share that information.

If you reached this site via an ad from Mayo Clinic

If you come to a Mayo Clinic website via a Mayo Clinic advertisement, the ad may have been served to you based on your interests or selected for you based on your browsing activities. If you want to opt out of being served Mayo Clinic advertisements based on your browsing activity, you may opt out of cookies for multiple ad servers by visiting http://info.evidon.com/more_info/1936 and http://www.goodwaygroup.com/privacy-policy.html.

To help us determine the effectiveness of Mayo Clinic advertising, we work with Web analytics tools hosted by third parties who receive non identifiable information from your browser, including the site or the advertisement you came from, your IP address, your general geographic location, your browser and platform information, and the pages you view within our site.

THESE LEGAL NOTICES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

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