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Peer review report 1 on “A multicenter review of epidemiology and management of varicose veins for national guidance”
Annals of Medicine and Surgery 5 Supplement 1 (2016) S146
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Annals of Medicine and Surgery journal homepage: www.annalsjournal.com
Peer review report
Peer review report 1 on “A multicenter review of epidemiology and management of varicose veins for national guidance” 1. Original submission 1.1. Recommendation Major revision. 1.2. Comments to the author Summary: This is a retrospective epidemiological review of varicose veins at two hospitals in India. It details the presentations and management of varicose veins specific to these two sites. I believe this manuscript is attempting to present too much data without a clearly defined message. I believe there is a good paper within this and would be keen to review a revised edition. Main impression: This article has reviewed the data on their experience with varicose veins well. However there is no comparison to any national guidelines, nor any suggestion of whether this is necessary. There is no statistical analysis of the data. Whilst this is potentially interesting data, I believe the 'so what' has yet to be answered. A much more interesting perspective may be to compare their data to any national guidelines, or utilise their experience to propose a national guidance for management of varicose verins specific to their patient population. Having been through the extensive tables at the end of the paper it is clear that some correlation analysis could be attempted for your cohort based on the demographics of your patients and their presentation types. This would be interesting. Outcome data may be interesting to show which patient groups does better and with what treatment. Perhaps comparing to UK experience from NICE may be useful. I think this would be a useful addition to the literature. I would be keen to review this manuscript if such a perspective were taken. Specific comments: Title: This could be amended to help answer a more unique
DOI of published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2016.04.024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2016.05.002 2049-0801
question that is useful to the reader. I think currently this does not necessarily introduce anything new. 'a Multicentre review of epidemiology & management of Varicose veins for national guidance' for instance. Abstract this was succinct. Introduction I understand what the authors have done, however why have they done it? Is there a public health reason, for evidence of management change? This aim should be outlined in the introduction. Methods e The methods are fine. Please add inclusion and exclusion criteria. What was collected in the aforementioned proforma. Please can it be added as supplementary file data. If data was analysed with SPSS where are the statistics? T tests may be useful for comparing these, or analysis of variance. Results e There is clearly a lot of data here in this work. The question is what is the most important to present. I feel the underlying message that the authors which to demonstrate is lost by the presentation of too much data. Discussion & Conclusions: The discussion should be more succinct. There are a lot of points being made, not necessarily bad ones. It may be better to again think about the overall message. Clearly there is a wealth of evidence to compare your data to e but to what end? The sentence structure of many sentences will need revision as many of the text reads like a presentation script rather than a manuscript. Statistics e Please add statistical analysis if using SPSS V 6 for analysis. Robert Michal Taylor Staruch London Deanery, 12A Evelyn Mansions, London W149RQ, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected].
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Annals of Medicine and Surgery journal homepage: www.annalsjournal.com
Peer review report
Peer review report 1 on “A multicenter review of epidemiology and management of varicose veins for national guidance” 1. Original submission 1.1. Recommendation Major revision. 1.2. Comments to the author Summary: This is a retrospective epidemiological review of varicose veins at two hospitals in India. It details the presentations and management of varicose veins specific to these two sites. I believe this manuscript is attempting to present too much data without a clearly defined message. I believe there is a good paper within this and would be keen to review a revised edition. Main impression: This article has reviewed the data on their experience with varicose veins well. However there is no comparison to any national guidelines, nor any suggestion of whether this is necessary. There is no statistical analysis of the data. Whilst this is potentially interesting data, I believe the 'so what' has yet to be answered. A much more interesting perspective may be to compare their data to any national guidelines, or utilise their experience to propose a national guidance for management of varicose verins specific to their patient population. Having been through the extensive tables at the end of the paper it is clear that some correlation analysis could be attempted for your cohort based on the demographics of your patients and their presentation types. This would be interesting. Outcome data may be interesting to show which patient groups does better and with what treatment. Perhaps comparing to UK experience from NICE may be useful. I think this would be a useful addition to the literature. I would be keen to review this manuscript if such a perspective were taken. Specific comments: Title: This could be amended to help answer a more unique
DOI of published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2016.04.024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2016.05.002 2049-0801
question that is useful to the reader. I think currently this does not necessarily introduce anything new. 'a Multicentre review of epidemiology & management of Varicose veins for national guidance' for instance. Abstract this was succinct. Introduction I understand what the authors have done, however why have they done it? Is there a public health reason, for evidence of management change? This aim should be outlined in the introduction. Methods e The methods are fine. Please add inclusion and exclusion criteria. What was collected in the aforementioned proforma. Please can it be added as supplementary file data. If data was analysed with SPSS where are the statistics? T tests may be useful for comparing these, or analysis of variance. Results e There is clearly a lot of data here in this work. The question is what is the most important to present. I feel the underlying message that the authors which to demonstrate is lost by the presentation of too much data. Discussion & Conclusions: The discussion should be more succinct. There are a lot of points being made, not necessarily bad ones. It may be better to again think about the overall message. Clearly there is a wealth of evidence to compare your data to e but to what end? The sentence structure of many sentences will need revision as many of the text reads like a presentation script rather than a manuscript. Statistics e Please add statistical analysis if using SPSS V 6 for analysis. Robert Michal Taylor Staruch London Deanery, 12A Evelyn Mansions, London W149RQ, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected].