Review for 10.1186/s12876-021-01768-8 (2021)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on colorectal cancer patients: A single-center retrospective
study
Version: 
0 
Date: 
30 Dec 2020
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for the opportunity to review yours and your team's work. 
This is a great summary of events that has taken place in one of the more reputable colorectal units in
China with a high patient volume. I personally have visited the centre and have been impressed with their
tertiary level of subspecialty care. 
I would also like to congratulate the team in their efforts amidst the COVID-19 pandemic which have
been practice modifying on a global scale. 
I would like to offer my suggested revision to the paper: 
1. It was mentioned in the methods that neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy was offerred to rectal cancer
patients. I would like to clarify whether this was a universal blanket practice that all rectal cancer, whether
or not it fulfils the NCCN criteria for Neoadjuvant treatment, or was it based on the NCCN indications
for neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. Also, it would be important to state whether long / short course was
administered, the wait after the treatment to surgical intervention, and the percentage of people who did
not eventually proceed to surgery. In addition, a potential way to "delay surgery" is to administer total
neoadjuvant treatment, was this an option in the author's centre? 
2. under lines 127-128, "..., endoscopy was resumed." consider to change to "...., endoscopy was
performed."
3. Please elaborate on the follow up plan that the author's institution adopted for the polyps that was
discovered but no polypectomy was performed. was any biopsy performed instead? if not, how was the
polyps evaluated for malignant potential? 
4. It would be great if the team could elaborate on the safety precautions, both protocols and equipments
(masks, PAPR, etc) , taken in the Operating Room and Endoscopy suites to allow a safe practice of
laparoscopic surgery and endoscopic procedures.
5. Statistical analysis: was any test for normality performed to ascertain the utility of mean + SD instead of
median + 95% CI? as this would play a part in the statistical tool being used (parametric vs
nonparametric)
Thanks for the clarification and congratulations once again. 
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