JerMa88/BMC_Gastroenterology_Peer_Reviews huggingface dataset:
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02289-8 (2022)

Title: Laparoscopic liver resection of segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first
approach guided by the middle hepatic vein
Version: 3 Date: 15 Nov 2021
Reviewer's report:
I can accept the concept of your operation. But, your results cannot suport enoughy your
conclsuion. Detail data and procedures should be added.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02289-8 (2022)

Title: Laparoscopic liver resection of segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first
approach guided by the middle hepatic vein
Version: 3 Date: 10 Dec 2021
Reviewer's report:
I have read with interest the article by Nan You and colleagues entitled “Laparoscopic
anatomical resection of liver segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first approach
guided by the middle hepatic vein”. The authors propose an interesting standardized  technique
for laparoscopic anatomic resection of Segment 8. They present their experience with
encouraging results in 14 patients who underwent laparoscopic anatomical resection of liver
segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first approach guided by the middle hepatic
vein (MHV).
The authors are to be congratulated for the great effort in producing an original report on a new
standardized technique that contributes to the present literature in this particular field. However,
there are in my opinion some aspects that should be revised before considering publication.
Specific Comments:
- The results reported in abstract are too scarce. It is said that “no complications” were
encountered but in the main text It is said that no “severe complications” were developed. This
is not the same and It is hard to believe 0% morbidity in this type of procedure and patients even
in high volume centers. Please clarify and revise.
- Why were child pugh B patients excluded? Were these patients operated and excluded for this
study analysis or is this alone an exclusion criteria for resection in your center, even for minor
resections?
- Were all patients discussed before treatment in a Multidisciplinary Tumor Board? Please
clarify.
It is said that hemostatic products were used after resection, what products do you refer to?
Please specify.
- It is said that surgical margins were negative, It would be nice to know median and range or
mean and SD in milimeters. Please revise.
- Morbidity, even if not severe, should be reported and described. What classification of surgical
complications was used?
- There are many technical issues described in the Discussion section that could be abbreviated
and moved to methods.
- If possible, it would be nice to include a short video of the technique as supplementary material
for the readers.
- English language usage in the manuscript should be revised. There are some important
grammatical errors.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02289-8 (2022)

Title: Laparoscopic liver resection of segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first
approach guided by the middle hepatic vein
Version: 4 Date: 24 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
I really congratulate authors' safe and new technique for laparoscopic liver resection is S8, which
is the most difficult area to be resected. I found that the results were quite good and reproducible.
However, according to the recent consensus meeting during JSHBPS in Japan, 2021, this kind of
approach cannot be categorized as "anatomical" (J Hepatobiliary Pancreat Sci. 2022;29:66–81.).
I do not agree to the consensus, but we must follow. I recommend that the term "anatomical"
should be removed from the title and whole manuscript.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02289-8 (2022)

Title: Laparoscopic liver resection of segment 8 via a hepatic parenchymal transection-first
approach guided by the middle hepatic vein
Version: 4 Date: 27 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
In my view  the  authors have improved the manuscript and appropiately adressed reviewers
comments.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02316-8 (2022)

Title: Characteristics of acute kidney injury and its impact on outcome in patients with acute-
on-chronic liver failure
Version: 0 Date: 13 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting study aimed at defining characteristics and outcomes of patients with
ACLF, defined by APAPL criteria. Authors describe characteristics of patients with AKI and
ACLF and developed a model to predict the probability to develop AKI in these patients. Authors
also found independent predictor factors for mortality in patients with ACLF.
MAIN COMMENTS
- The current study is similar with the study published by Zang et al. in 2016 that included mainly
the same targeted population, with the same aims and with a model for predicting AKI. The
main difference between current study and Zang’s study is that study from Zang et al. included
patients with ACLF diagnosed according to CMA criteria. Authors should further comment on
this point.
- Multivariate analysis. Authors nicely showed the significant differences between patients with
AKI and non-AKI. However, there is only one model for each multivariate analysis (also table
5), and authors did not report all the variables included in those models.
- Some of the variable included in the multivariate analysis seems not significant in the univariate
analysis (table 4).
- Mortality. How many patients received liver transplantation? How was it analyzed? This needs
to be addressed.
MINOR COMMENTS.
- Despite other authors reported similar results of the current study, other studies that compared
C-AKI and H-AKI are somehow different. Authors should comment that.
- Fluctuated-in situ. Authors might rename his type of AKI, as for instance “persistent”.
- Authors should report how many patients used admission creatinine as baseline creatinine?
- Methods. Authors should describe in methods section the characteristics of validation cohort.
- Methods. Authors should explain the definitions used to define the different types of AKI.
- This study included patients with ACLF according to ASPLP definitions. How many patients
had liver cirrhosis?
- Figure 3C. How was selected the cut-off of srCr of 133mmol/L?
- There are some spelling mistakes (for example: “livre” disease, page 15 line 299.).
- Authors should specify the overall mortality and explain if 90-day mortality model includes
all the cohort or only patients with AKI.
- Discussion. Authors might summarize the discussion. In addition, from “circulatory
dysfunction…. To causing kidney dysfunction.” is a description of the pathophysiology of
cirrhosis, however it is not linked with the results of the study.
- Discussion. Authors should mention and explain the limitations of the study. Such as: it is a
retrospective study, and so on.
- Conclusions/Discussion. Authors should add that the message: “It will be interesting to study
or test PK-AKI model in patients with cirrhosis but without ACLF”.
- Legend at page 13 should be Zang not Xin.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02316-8 (2022)

Title: Characteristics of acute kidney injury and its impact on outcome in patients with acute-
on-chronic liver failure
Version: 0 Date: 13 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
Huang Y et al present a retrospective cohort study entitled "Characteristics of acute kidney injury
and its impact on outcome in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure". With this study they
aimed to assess risk factors for AKI development among patients with cirrhosis admitted to the
hospital.
They have used a fairly large training set (n=574) from a single centre to describe AKI in
patients with ACLF (defined by APAPL), mainly with HBV as underlying cause. They have
differentiated CA AKI from HA AKI. They then developed a predictive model to predict the risk
of HA AKI with 7 variables to compute (age, GI bleed, infection, BUN, PT, Bilirubin, Albumin).
Finally, they validated this model in a different smaller cohort.
The novelty of these findings is not impressive. However, the fact that this constitutes a cohort
of patients with cirrhosis from China, where HBV infection represents almost half of all cases,
may be of interest for the readership mostly from there.
Major comments:
1.The introduction could detail better possible mechanisms of AKI in patients with cirrhosis,
including those from sepsis.
2.How did you define cirrhosis?
3.How did excluded patients with predicted life expectancy of less than 3 days? Do you mean
by this you excluded patients lacking that follow-up period?
4.The missing values should be presented at least as %.
5.Why use Hosmer-Lemeshow to test the models' fit with all its limitations?
6.How many patients required ICU admission and RRT (any protocol for starting)?
7.How many patients went on to receive a liver transplant?
8.Why did you exclude CA AKI? Why did you select only potential individual predictors that
were statistically significant as this may excluded other clinically relevant? You should detail
better the rationale to do this. Furthermore, was there collinearity among predictors?
9.Please describe better how you found your discrimination and calibration between training
and validation sets to worth.
10.As you detail in the Discussion section, to compare your index with previous ones not
developed for this purpose is not much informative.
11.How did you define pre-renal azotaemia, ATN and HRS?
12.The discussion is extremely lengthy and has a lot of information from previous studies that
do not add anything new. I would concentrate on debating about the main findings.
13.Comments such as "In this study, almost 40% of the patients had AKI, which could be avoided
by eliminating its risk factors." are very difficult to accept. If this was possible to do, it would
be nice, but it is unlikely.
14.This other comment "This means that patients with alcohol liver disease may have a better
prognosis of AKI than those with other types of chronic liver disease" is also difficult to interpret.
15.The Abstract should target the main findings about the risk index for HA AKI.
Minor comments
1.The article would benefit of being much shorter.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02316-8 (2022)

Title: Characteristics of acute kidney injury and its impact on outcome in patients with acute-
on-chronic liver failure
Version: 1 Date: 09 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
I appreciate the authors responses to comments made.
I still would highlight some issues though:
1. The abstract needs to be clearer about main objective and KP AKI model components.
2. HRS definition remains confusing: is it the old one (sCr cutoff of 1.5mg/dl without other
causes) or the new one (a specific type of AKI as per KDIGO guidelines)?
3. I think providing missing data across all variables and if imputation was performed for
modelling would be valuable.
4. Was there any collinear behaviour between liver function tests such as bilirubin, albumin and
PT?
5. I still feel a brier score, besides calibration plots, would be better to assess predictive power
of models in different sets.
6. Again, it would be informative to clearly provide how many patients developed sepsis or
needed RRT, ICU admission, and LT.
7. I think limitations section should be expanded, for example: selection bias (retrospective
nature), exclusion of CA AKI, HBV etiology preponderance, overall severity of disease or access
to LT.
8. Again, the manuscript is too long.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02315-9 (2022)

Title: Application of a Novel Scoring System for Gastric Cancer Opportunistic Screening in
Hospital Visits
Version: 0 Date: 17 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
The authors propose a new scoring system and screening procedure for gastric cancer screening.
The study is very interesting, but there are several issues that may limit further impact.
1. The inclusion criteria are all high-risk exposure factors for gastric cancer, which may have
less effect on healthy people
2. Can you explain how to determine the cut-off values for the high, intermediate and low risk
groups
3. Whether baseline differences such as age, gender, and BMI among high-, intermediate-, and
low-risk groups can be obtained, there may be interesting findings
4. Expect more in-depth discussions on different gastric cancer types
5. The cited literature is relatively old, and it is recommended to update the latest progress articles
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02315-9 (2022)

Title: Application of a Novel Scoring System for Gastric Cancer Opportunistic Screening in
Hospital Visits
Version: 0 Date: 27 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
1. The idea of this study is relatively new, but the overall article is poorly framed. Only data
from a large single-centre sample was included in this study for validation to derive the scoring
model. To make this scoring system more practical and feasible, the authors are requested to
divide the 6701 patients into two cohorts in a ratio of 2:1, one being the training set and the
other being the internal validation set. An external validation set will also need to be found for
validation, including data from other units as well as the SEER database, and the above external
data should be validated separately for external validation.
2. Did all 6701 patients undergo gastroscopy? Is there a high concordance between the
proportion of patients screened for gastric cancer using the new scoring system and the
proportion screened out by endoscopy? Could the authors please add the ROC curves for gastric
cancer screening when the new scoring system, gastroscopy and the two are combined?
3. The authors are requested to add the rationale for the score assignment of the new scoring
system (score assignment in Table 1). Please explain the reasons for the different scores for
each indicator. Please describe in detail in the methodology section whether the scores were
artificially set or calculated using cut-off values for a large sample of data.
4. The authors are requested to provide a copy of the ethical approval for this study and the
ethical approval number.
5. The language of the full text also needs to be revised by a native English-speaking professional
for this purpose.
6. The number of references is too small and in addition relatively old. The authors are requested
to add literature from the last 2 years, and the number of references should be added to more
than 30.
7. In summary, the manuscript is recommended to be rejected. The manuscript should be
forwarded to another journal.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02310-0 (2022)

Title: Neonatal cholestasis is an early liver manifestation of children with acid sphingomyelinase
deficiency
Version: 3 Date: 10 Feb 2022
Reviewer:  Vikrant Sood
Reviewer's report:
The current manuscript delivers an important message with regards to consideration of storage
disorders like NPA/NPB amongst the differential diagnosis of neonatal cholestasis. Some points
may be further considered:
1) Some comments like 'It is possible that ASMD patients with neonatal cholestasis have a worse
prognosis.' should be avoided without any relevant evidence for the same (sample size is too
small)
2) Please mention the details of the liver biopsy findings in table 2- please highlight the stage
of  hepatic injury and grade of fibrosis
3) In the discussion, please also highlight the high GGTP levels (for age) in these 3 patients
with neonatal cholestasis - Highlight the fact the they should be considered along with other
disorders with high GGTP levels
4) Authors may consider adding a figure showing a diagnostic algorithm for their neonatal/
cholestasis patients especially highlighting the scenarios where storage disorders may be
considered
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02310-0 (2022)

Title: Neonatal cholestasis is an early liver manifestation of children with acid sphingomyelinase
deficiency
Version: 3 Date: 16 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
This manuscript on Niemann Pick type A presenting as infantile cholestasis is an important
addition to the literature on ASMD, and suggests that treating physicians should add ASMD to
the differential diagnosis of infants who present with this liver manifestation.
The authors indicate that 7 patients underwent liver and bone marrow biopsies.  Although the
presence of foam cells is noted in one of the tables,  it would be valuable to include representative
pathology images of both liver and bone marrow biopsies.  This is valuable data on a rare
disease which should be published.  It would also be valuable to include other features of the
liver biopsies in the table such as degree of fibrosis/cirrhosis, inflammation and necrosis in
each patient biopsy.  There should also be more discussion of the findings in the bone marrow
biopsies.
These has been a recent publication in the literature on a complete Type A autopsy which would
be valuable to include in the discussion and reference list:
Beth L Thurberg.  Autopsy pathology of infantile neurovisceral ASMD (Niemann-Pick Disease
type A): Clinicopathologic correlations of a case report. Mol Genet Metab Reports, 2020, Jul
16;24:100626. doi: 10.1016/j.ymgmr.2020.100626. eCollection 2020 Sep.PMID: 32714837
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02310-0 (2022)

Title: Neonatal cholestasis is an early liver manifestation of children with acid sphingomyelinase
deficiency
Version: 4 Date: 16 Apr 2022
Reviewer:  Vikrant Sood
Reviewer's report:
The revised manuscript looks good- Just 1 comment- Please highlight foam cells in figure 3 and
provide a higher magnification picture depicting foam cell in one of the figures
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02314-w (2022)

Title: Anticoagulant Drugs With or Without Proton Pump Inhibitor and Colorectal Cancer Risk:
A Population-Based, Case-Control Study
Version: 3 Date: 11 Jan 2022
Reviewer:  Isabel Portillo
Reviewer's report:
Dear authors,
It was a pleasure to review your work. However, I would like to give you some remarks:
1) How do you calculate the exposition time? Why 40 days or 84 days? I think will be useful
you explain better this issue
2) Did you consider the adherence to treatment?
3) The rate of CRC incidence and mortality  in Asia is very different between countries and
possible associated to different life styles and Health care investment. Maybe your results are
not applicable for other countries in this huge continent.
Although, your study will be useful to give a new highlight  about the PPI prescription and CRC
risk. PPI are a common drug prescribed in developped countries.
Best Regards
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02314-w (2022)

Title: Anticoagulant Drugs With or Without Proton Pump Inhibitor and Colorectal Cancer Risk:
A Population-Based, Case-Control Study
Version: 3 Date: 21 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
There is a large bias in this study.
1) The ratio of the number of cases in CRC group and Non-CRC group is 1: 4. This is really
different from the general distribution.
2) More than 31% of the BMI, which is representative basic data, are missing.
3) The percentage of cases with Upper GI bleeding was 11.3% in the CRC group and 2.8% in
the Non-CRC group. This is a big bias. Taking PPI or anticoagulant was not thought to be the
cause of CRC. It is speculated that patients taking an anticoagulant may cause bleeding and in
such case CRC may have been discovered as a result of performed endoscopy and CT.
4) There seems to be a lot of overlap in the Comorbidity.
5) Table 2. The result was that the occurrence of CRC was low in the Low-dose aspirin +
Clopidogrel group, though the number of cases was too small.
From the above, it seems that the case selection in this study is incorrect. For example, it would
be better to correct the study design that matches the backgrounds of all CRC groups and Non-
CRC groups and compare the rate of administration of each drug.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02302-0 (2022)

Title: Magnetically Controlled Capsule Endoscopy in One-time Gastro-small Intestinal Joint
Examination: A Two-centre Experience
Version: 2 Date: 29 Jan 2022
Reviewer:  Rajesh Kumar Paramasivam
Reviewer's report:
Dear Professor,
Congratulations on a creative idea. Few points that I would like to raise:
1. The cost effectiveness of this GSI need to be looked at. As we know the incidence of
meaningful small bowel lesion is  not frequent,  hence the need to look at small bowel mucosa
may not be that regular.
2. Each of this patient will need to go for bowel preparation which is a cumbersome process
especially if the pathology mainly lies in the stomach.
In summary, this is an impressive technology but the utility would be confined to certain small
bowel diseases which would benefit from it.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02302-0 (2022)

Title: Magnetically Controlled Capsule Endoscopy in One-time Gastro-small Intestinal Joint
Examination: A Two-centre Experience
Version: 2 Date: 05 Feb 2022
Reviewer:  Nazri Mustaffa
Reviewer's report:
An interesting paper that explores the utility of a combined stomach-small intestine magnetically
controllable capsule endoscopy (MCE) examination.
A major issue that needs to be clarified is whether MCE itself is already an accepted standard-
of-care examination modality. The references quoted refer to MCE as an experimental modality
(feasibility and safety etc). The authors indicate that they have received ethical approval for this
retrospective study on subjects who have had both stomach and small intestine MCE performed.
However, the fact remains if the subjects had initially consented for an MCE procedure that will
observe BOTH stomach and the small intestine in one procedure. As the authors pointed out,
observing both the stomach and small intestine has not been discussed well in the literature; thus,
performing a simultaneous stomach and small bowel examination using MCE would itself be
deemed as an experimental procedure and would need informed consent from potential subjects,
something that is not highlighted in this paper.
Some other points to highlight:
1. The title describes a joint stomach-small intestinal MCE procedure, but in the results, there
is mention of oesophagitis and diverticulitis, which do not fit in the scope of the title.
2. The opening statement of the abstract is confusing: "The diseases distributed in the both
stomach and small intestine are commonly seen..." What do the authors mean?
3. Grammar/sentence structure issues abound. In the abstract for example: "...strategy of
gastroscopy followed enteroscopy...". Many more errors are present. In the abstract conclusion
"in the one time" should be replaced with "simultaneously". Do the authors mean "wasteful"
instead of "wistful", "satisfactory" instead of "satisfied"?
4. Study procedures should be described in the past tense and standardised throughout the paper.
5. "Consecutive participants referred for MCE in two centers from January 2020 to August
2021 were retrospectively enrolled". The terms "participants" and "enrolled" denote active
involvement/recruitment into the study, may not be so appropriate for use as this is a
retrospective study.
5. "Success rate of small intestinal examination was 97.40%, with MCE failed to reach the
caecum in 20 participants". However, capsule retention only occurred in 2 subjects?
6. The paper is very lengthy as the authors describe in detail each component of the study.
To increase readability, suggest focusing only on specific results in the paper, the rest can be
referred to in the attached table.
7. Figure legend: "(l) Small eneritis"
8. Table headings: GSI or GSI joint examination? Please standardise
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02302-0 (2022)

Title: Magnetically Controlled Capsule Endoscopy in One-time Gastro-small Intestinal Joint
Examination: A Two-centre Experience
Version: 2 Date: 24 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
This retrospective study demonstrated the good efficacy of capsule endoscopy with active
locomotion system (MCE) to examine both the stomach and the small intestine in one session.
1.  In this study, GIB (melena) is the indication for MCE  in only 5.47% of the patients which is
much lower than the  GIB as an indication in other VCE studies.  Could you please  give more
details about the indications for MCE and how to extrapolate  to other groups of patients i.e.
patients with GIB  (for example, in patients with suspected small bowel bleeding that  sometimes
we need to repeat EGD before VCE).
2.  How do you  evaluate the visualization of small intestine mucosa? Do you use AI or use
samples of still pictures?
3. Do you have more information about the outcome of MCE (the change in management
compare to standard endoscopic examination in each indications)? For example, when MCE
were performed in patients with melena or GERD, is there any change in management when
compare with doing  only EGD?
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02302-0 (2022)

Title: Magnetically Controlled Capsule Endoscopy in One-time Gastro-small Intestinal Joint
Examination: A Two-centre Experience
Version: 4 Date: 05 Apr 2022
Reviewer:  Nazri Mustaffa
Reviewer's report:
The concerns that were previously highlighted have been well-addressed by the authors. Apart
from this, the manuscript has been much improved in terms of grammar and sentence structure.
Thus, the manuscript is acceptable for publication. Kudos to the authors on their effort.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02300-2 (2022)

Title: Mucosal healing of small intestinal stricture is associated with improved prognosis post-
dilation in Crohn’s disease
Version: 1 Date: 27 Feb 2022
Reviewer:  Jorge Amil-dias
Reviewer's report:
This is an important study and the authors were careful to consider the various variables that
may influence the prognosis and subsequent need for surgery after elective dilation of the small
bowel. However it is intriguing that the ongoing or previous treatment was not considered with
the same scrutiny and analysis.
Looking at the data file I noticed that most patients were under treatment with 5-ASA or
corticosteroids that are known to be poorly effective (5-ASA) or not promoting mucosal healing
(steroids). The use of biologics may help promote mucosal healing and the subset of patients
using them in appropriate schedule might be analysed on the same endpoint.
It would be interesting to evaluate whether previous aggressive treatment promoting effective
mucosal healing might reduce the need for surgery.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02300-2 (2022)

Title: Mucosal healing of small intestinal stricture is associated with improved prognosis post-
dilation in Crohn’s disease
Version: 1 Date: 18 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
Hibiya et al present a very interesting and useful retrospective analysis of mucosal healing of
small bowel strictures and its relationship to the success of balloon dilation.  Overall this is a
well designed study and the paper is well written.  Specific comments below:
1.  It is not clear from the abstract that this paper specifically refers to strictures ABOVE the
terminal ileum - i.e. requiring access via balloon enteroscopy.  As many CD strictures occur
in the terminal ileum and ICV, it must be very clear that this paper refers to strictures NOT
accessible via standard colonoscopy.  In the methods section this also must be clarified if patients
with terminal ileal strictures were specifically excluded.
2.  Background - "The development of balloon-assisted enteroscopy (BAE)2 has made
endoscopic balloon dilation (EBD) of small intestinal strictures possible, consequently avoiding
surgery3,4. " <-- this is not strictly true that all EBD avoids surgery.  I suggest rewording this.
3.  Results - "Patient's Background" would be better referred to as Demographics.
Most results presented in this section are reported without P values in the text (although well
reported in the accompanying tables.  I would suggest adding the P values in the text to assist
the reader in discerning the  significant results and level of significance.  Likewise, a P Value
for the difference in the survival (HR and P Val) would add to figure 2.
There is no reporting  any analysis of medication or treatment or overall disease duration other
than what is presented in the tables.  It would be interesting to analyse patients on combination
therapy (Immunomodulator + anti-TNF)  separately as well as duration of anti-TNF therapy (i.e.
how long before the EBD was this commenced?).  This should be discussed in the discussion
section as a recently published stricture trial (Schulberg et al, Lancet Gastro Hep, 2022) has
shown a benefit in anti-TNF treatment on the outcomes of strictures.
4. Discussion
The discussion contains a number of statements that should be in the results section rather than
the discussion (transition to surgery rates, strictures >2cm etc).
Also, minor spelling mistakes noted in the tables.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02300-2 (2022)

Title: Mucosal healing of small intestinal stricture is associated with improved prognosis post-
dilation in Crohn’s disease
Version: 3 Date: 14 Apr 2022
Reviewer:  Jorge Amil-dias
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for revised version. This is an interesting study providing important information.
Queries from reviewers were appropriately addressed.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02300-2 (2022)

Title: Mucosal healing of small intestinal stricture is associated with improved prognosis post-
dilation in Crohn’s disease
Version: 3 Date: 20 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
I thank the authors for their considered edits as per the reviews.
The paper is much improved and I have no more comments to make.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02269-y (2022)

Title: Gallbladder-preserving polypectomy for gallbladder polyp by embryonic-natural orifice
transumbilical endoscopic surgery with a gastric endoscopy
Version: 2 Date: 02 Nov 2021
Reviewer's report:
I believe this work shouldn´t be published.
1. With 12 cases you can´t say its a safe procedure. Complications after lap chole are very rare.
Just 1 bile leak from the gallbladder will render the procedure of NOTES risky. You overstate
the complications of cholecystectomy...colon cancer??? In the long term patients don´t even
remember the date of their cholecystectomy. There is no need for this procedure.
2. Polyps less than 5 mm should´t even be operated, and thos of 5-10 mm is very controversial.
Why are you offering a risky procedure to these patients? Are they properly informed about
their diagnosis?
3. Length of stay of 5 or more days after the procedure. Lap chole in these patients is ambulatory.
Why so many days?
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02269-y (2022)

Title: Gallbladder-preserving polypectomy for gallbladder polyp by embryonic-natural orifice
transumbilical endoscopic surgery with a gastric endoscopy
Version: 2 Date: 25 Nov 2021
Reviewer's report:
Dear Authors,
Thank you for giving me a chance to review this manuscript. This treatment is technically
wonderful. I pay tribute to this challenge.
However, I have some concerns about this manuscript.
1. What is the size of targeted lesion. Authors resected GB polyps of any size? I think that it is
unnecessary to resect small polyps.
2. Though the treatment technique is wonderful, it is doubtful that benign GB polyps should be
removed. In the future, what lesions should be performed E-NOTES?
3. Can you make the table of all 12 patients, If you can?
4. Do hemostatic clamps migrate from a seam of GB?
5. As a minimally invasive treatment of GB stone or polyps, EUS-guided polypectomy was
reported. How should we use E-NOTES and EUS-guided GB polypectomy?
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02269-y (2022)

Title: Gallbladder-preserving polypectomy for gallbladder polyp by embryonic-natural orifice
transumbilical endoscopic surgery with a gastric endoscopy
Version: 2 Date: 29 Nov 2021
Reviewer:  Paul Yeaton
Reviewer's report:
I think this is remarkable.
There are cultural differences that will certainly arise and confuse may readers.
I have the impression that many Chinese wish to retain the gallbladder.
The typical Westerner would consider the gallbladder the most disposable organ in the body,
perhaps more than the appendix.
I don't know how this is best addressed, or if it needs to be addressed at all; most Westerners
reading this will be confused as to why such extraordinary skill was used when the gallbladder
could simply be removed. I am sure such a study could never be replicated in the West; people
would not understand the premise.
The skill of the procedure is elegant, as an example the  hemostatic clip placement - I know few
Americans that could be so precise placing them in the stomach.
Perhaps expanding on the reasons for gallbladder preservation would help many readers in the
West.
I would definitely expand the details of how the procedure was performed, as mentioned in some
of  the earlier comments.
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Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02269-y (2022)

Title: Gallbladder-preserving polypectomy for gallbladder polyp by embryonic-natural orifice
transumbilical endoscopic surgery with a gastric endoscopy
Version: 4 Date: 22 Feb 2022
Reviewer:  Paul Yeaton
Reviewer's report:
The amended authors contributions should identify the  operator(s).
Is this the work of a single very skillful endoscopist?
One wonders why an endoscope is the preferred instrument. Would a laparoscopic surgeon have
a different perspective, especially related to closure of the gallbladder incision?
I suggest that technical alternatives be discussed.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02283-0 (2022)

Title: Number of endoscopic sessions to eradicate varices identifies high risk of rebleeding in
cirrhotic patients
Version: 2 Date: 12 Jan 2022
Reviewer's report:
The paper is interesting and well written. I  have the following comments:
1) When only one variable is significant at univariate analysis, multivariate analysis  makes no
sense . Please revise the table  2 accordingly.
2) In the Kaplan Meyer curves (Figure 2A and 3), please add the number  of patients at risk
3) Median follow-up should be expressed as median and 95% confidence interval (not range)
4) What was the role of antithrombotic drugs on the final outcome?
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02283-0 (2022)

Title: Number of endoscopic sessions to eradicate varices identifies high risk of rebleeding in
cirrhotic patients
Version: 2 Date: 06 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting study for variceal bleeding. It can provide simple method for predicting
further bleeding in these patients. However, I have some questions about this article.
1. It is better to provide the number of GOV type 1 (GOV1)/GOV type 2 (GOV2) and esophageal
varices (EV) in the table or manuscript.
2. It is better to provide the severity of varices in this article, such as shape of varices (F1/F2/
F3), presence of red color sings of varices , Modified Paquet classification.
3. If possible , the above factors should be considering for analyzing.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02296-9 (2022)

Title: Sarcopenia Is Associated with Prognosis in Patients with Esophageal Squamous Cell
Cancer after Radiotherapy or Chemoradiotherapy
Version: 0 Date: 07 Sep 2021
Reviewer's report:
Dear authors:
Congratulation for the comprehensive work.
There are some recommended revisions as below:
1. In Table 1, you may add the correlation between sarcopenia and alcohol use.  Chronic
use of alcohol may impact the function of hepatopancreatic and gastrointestinal systems and
metabolism, which may also lead to sarcopenia.
2. You may illustrate the different implications between hypoalbuminemia and sarcopenia in the
discussion. In this study, hypoalbuminemia is not correlated with sarcopenia and both factors
are independent prognostic factors for overall survival.
3. In table 1, in the rows of SATI, VATI, and TATI, "high" and " low" are missing.  The
definitions of "high" and "low" are needed.
4. In Table 1, what is the definition of obesity?
5. What is the edition of AJCC staging system in this study?
6. In the paragraph of "Sarcopenia and Prognosis of ESCC", 5-year PFS was compared between
sarcopenia and non-sarcopenia.  It is recommended that 3-year rather than 5-year PFS is
compared.  The 5-year PFS is too low to have meaningful comparison.
7. This study showed that sarcopenia may impact the survival of ESCC patients.  However,
sarcopenia may also impact survival of general population.  You may try to compare the
hazard ratio in ESCC patients with the hazard ratio in general population in order to reveal the
interactions of sarcopenia with the cancer and the treatment.
8. If you have the baseline PET scan data from these patients, you may consider to correlate
the SUV of esophageal tumor with sarcopenia.  Sarcopenia may be related to cancer biology,
and PET scan may reveal the level of metabolism of the cancer. And some studies showed that
higher SUV of esophageal tumor is associated with poor survival in ESCC.
9. In table 2 and 3, please unify the direction of hazard ratios of all the factors. (Factor A, low
vs high, does the hazard ratio stand for low/high or high/low?)
10. In Figure 5a, you may explain why stage I-II has inferior survival in the first year compared
to stage III-IV.
11. In the discussion, you mentioned that the patients received definitive CRT combined with
chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy.  You may need to clarify what kind of
immunotherapy and targeted therapy were given, and whether these therapies may influence the
analysis.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02296-9 (2022)

Title: Sarcopenia Is Associated with Prognosis in Patients with Esophageal Squamous Cell
Cancer after Radiotherapy or Chemoradiotherapy
Version: 3 Date: 27 Dec 2021
Reviewer's report:
Dear authors:
Thank you for the revisions from the previous review.
For the revised manuscript, there are some recommendations:
1. Patients who received radiotherapy alone are included in the analysis, which may increased
the heterogeneity  and bias in the analysis. Please consider the necessity of having these patients
in the analysis.  If you decide to keep these patients in the analysis, you may need to have the
treatment (CRT vs RT) as a factor in the multivariate analysis even if it is not significant in the
univariate analysis because CRT has been well known to be better than RT for patients survival
and RT alone is not a standard treatment for these patients, which indicates that having these
patients in the analysis may invite a lot of unpredictable bias.
2. In the "treatment" section of "Material and Methods", it was said that "All patients treated with
platinum-based chemotherapy (median of 3 cycles, range 1-6 cycles). 63 patients received RT,
112 patients received concurrent CRT and 38 patients received sequential CRT."  Please clarify
whether all patients were treated with platinum-based chemotherapy and whether 63 patients
received RT alone.
3. In table 2, there may be an error in the HR of multivariate analysis of N stage.
4. There may be an error in the Figure 4a. The directions of albumin may be opposite.
5. There may be an error in the Figure 5d. The directions of anemia may be opposite.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02296-9 (2022)

Title: Sarcopenia Is Associated with Prognosis in Patients with Esophageal Squamous Cell
Cancer after Radiotherapy or Chemoradiotherapy
Version: 4 Date: 19 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
"PEER REVIEWER ASSESSMENTS:
OBJECTIVE - Full research articles: is there a clear objective that addresses one or several
testable research questions? (Brief or other article types: is there a clear objective?)
Yes - there is a clear objective
DESIGN - Is the current approach (including controls and analysis protocols) appropriate for
the objective?
Yes - the approach is appropriate
EXECUTION - Are the experiments and analyses performed with sufficient technical rigor to
allow confidence in the results?
Yes - experiments and analyses were performed appropriately
STATISTICS - Is the use of statistics in the manuscript appropriate?
Yes - appropriate statistical analyses have been used in the study
INTERPRETATION - Is the current interpretation/discussion of the results reasonable and not
overstated?
Yes - the author's interpretation is reasonable
OVERALL MANUSCRIPT POTENTIAL - Has the author addressed your concerns sufficiently
for you to now recommend the work as a technically sound contribution? If not, can further
revisions be made to make the work technically sound?
Yes - current version is technically sound
PEER REVIEWER COMMENTS:
GENERAL COMMENTS: Response to the comments
The authors have addressed the changes requested in the previous review.
Changes in the manuscript
The authors have highlighted the changes in the manuscript in red, which are clearly visible.
Overall impression of the revised manuscript
The manuscript has been improved and is suitable for publication, after extensive English
editing.
ADDITIONAL REQUESTS/SUGGESTIONS:
The definition of sarcopenia used is not an actual definition, even though it has been used in
a previously published study. The authors should state that this is simply a measure of muscle
mass that is used to identify sarcopenia in the absence of tests of physical function and muscle
strength.
Although the contents of the article have been improved, it still requires extensive editing
to improve written expression and formatting throughout before it would be suitable for
publication."
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02183-3 (2022)

Title: CircRNA circ-ATAD1 suppresses miR-618 maturation to participate in colorectal cancer
Version: 1 Date: 19 Mar 2021
Reviewer's report:
1.What is RT-qPCR amplification procedures and reaction systems in the section of Materials
and Methods.
2. I don't find the primer sequence. Preferably provided in the materials method.
3. Was BLAST performed or was any reference used ?(If so, please cite)This is important.
4. The materials and methods section should describe how the expression vector is constructed.
Sequencing results can be attached to supplementary materials.
5. Since mature miR-168 plays a major role, why does RNA pull down only detect premature
miR-168?
6. There is clinical data, why didn't  compare circ-ATAD1 with other clinical characteristics to
see if it was associated with other clinical traits besides proliferation?
7. There is an overexpression vector, a plate clone can be made to verify with CCK8.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02183-3 (2022)

Title: CircRNA circ-ATAD1 suppresses miR-618 maturation to participate in colorectal cancer
Version: 1 Date: 06 May 2021
Reviewer's report:
Cao and colleges examined the relationship between circ-ATAD1 and miR-168 in colorectal
cancer. Although the data shown by the authors are interesting, the paper lacks context thus
difficult to understand why authors conducted some of the experiments. In particular, the
methods in which authors identified the key target miRNA (miR-168) is unclear, but this is
perhaps the most novel part of the study. Therefore, there is a need for the authors to explain
in detail, how and why miR-168 was selected as the potential target. In addition, authors
should consider conducting additional functional experiments to show what is the cause of the
increasing proliferation of circ-ATAD1.
Please add, a target identification data to the manuscript explaining, how authors identified
miR-168 as the target genes for circRNA.
Please use actual values for qRT PCR data and represent the data as box and whisker plot or
something that is easier to evaluate the differences in gene expression (rather than heap map).
Also please conduct statistical analysis to show that the gene expression is different.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02288-9 (2022)

Title: Prevalence and genotypes distribution of group A rotavirus among outpatient children
under five years with acute diarrhea in Shanghai, China, 2012-2018
Version: 3 Date: 13 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
Overview
This study describes the prevalence of rotavirus genotypes from 1,814 samples collected among
children <5 year with acute diarrhea during 2012-2018 in Shanghai, China. Although such
studies have become routine, it is especially timely to document the prevalence of rotavirus
types in Asian Countries because of the licensure of a vaccine for use in China. The continuation
of these studies will help document strain prevalence after vaccine introduction and assess the
impact of vaccine programs on strain incidence.  In addition, these studies will be valuable to
assess the need to introduce new rotavirus vaccine platforms, and to plan for effective rotavirus
vaccine programs in China in the future.
The manuscript was very well described, clear and addressed all relevant data of the surveillance
group A rotavirus in children with acute diarrhea.
I suggest that the authors review the few points described below:
Line 249, This phenomenon could be related to the protective “maternal” immunity against RVA
obtained in children less than 6 months.
I consider it important the authors discuss the findings of genotypes G/P that are not included
in the vaccine currently used in China (LLR Lanzhou Lamb Rotavirus (LLR) vaccine rotavirus
G10P[12].  Include in the discussion the possibility of introducing the new trivalent live
human-lamb reassortant rotavirus vaccine (LLR3) in the Program on Immunization routine
immunization schedule in China.
I encourage authors to study the prevalence of human RVA (and genotypes) in samples collected
from children hospitalized with severe gastroenteritis in Shanghai.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02288-9 (2022)

Title: Prevalence and genotypes distribution of group A rotavirus among outpatient children
under five years with acute diarrhea in Shanghai, China, 2012-2018
Version: 3 Date: 16 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
1.Shanghai CDC has been carrying out similar monitoring, and some papers have been
published, for example#
Kuang X, Gong X, Zhang X, Pan H, Teng Z. Genetic diversity of group A rotavirus in
acute gastroenteritis outpatients in Shanghai from 2017 to 2018. BMC Infect Dis. 2020 Aug
12;20(1):596. doi: 10.1186/s12879-020-05279-x. PMID: 32787859; PMCID: PMC7425067.
2.It is necessary to explain clearly the sample collection method, such as how many samples
are taken every day, every week or every month. Different sampling methods affect the overall
detection rate, which also needs to be considered in the discussion.
3.In general, rotaviruses were first detected by real-time reverse transcription polymerase
chain reaction (RT-PCR) or ELISA to detect rotavirus, and  genotyping was performed using
semi-nested PCR . This paper directly uses semi-nested PCR to detect rotavirus, which may
underestimate the detection rate of rotavirus.
4.Detailed statistical methods should be stated.
5.The evolutionary analysis of major genes has not been carried out, which is a big limitation.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02288-9 (2022)

Title: Prevalence and genotypes distribution of group A rotavirus among outpatient children
under five years with acute diarrhea in Shanghai, China, 2012-2018
Version: 6 Date: 08 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
The authors have addressed clearly all comments and answered all the reviewers’ questions
point-by-point.  Therefore, the article is acceptable and could be considered for publication.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02288-9 (2022)

Title: Prevalence and genotypes distribution of group A rotavirus among outpatient children
under five years with acute diarrhea in Shanghai, China, 2012-2018
Version: 6 Date: 19 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
Thank ypu for considering my suggestions in your review, this version has improved a lot
I have some minor suggestion
Abstract
L35-36 - change "The majority of RVA frequency was detected" by The highest frequency of
RVA was observed in …...
L44-45Check if you can not include a good finding of the study on the first period of conclusion
instead of repeating the purpose of the study - this is just a suggestion.
Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02291-0 (2022)

Title: Value of CT sinography and analysis of missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis for abdominal
wall sinus
Version: 1 Date: 03 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for the opportunity to review this important manuscript. Here are my comments and
suggestions.
This is a good idea for the study but concepts should be different. First, We should ask ourselves
why do we need this imaging method. Will it change our management plan? I would divide the
groups of patients. Why do we need sinography after inguinal hernia repair.? It is difficult to
believe that the sinus tract communicates with the bowel lumen. What will be changed in the
treatment plan?
Enterocutaneous fistulas are another story.
Page 2, line 17-18. What about umbilical pilonidal sinus and persistent urachus.