Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01529-z (2020)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Comparison of metastasis between early-onset and late-onset gastric signet
ring cell carcinoma
Version: 
0 
Date: 
30 Sep 2020
Reviewer's report:
Thea authors enrolled relatively large number of patients with signet ring cell
gastric cancer and investigated prognostic factor between early-onset gastric
cancer (EOGC) and late-onset gastric cancer (LOGC). They revealed that the
prognosis of patients with LOGC was poor, while the distant metastasis was
more common in patients with EOGC. I read their article with interest, however,
several flaws remain to be unresolved.
Major revisions:
1. Introduction section is too long. I think descriptions concerning genetic
mutation should be cited in the discussion section.
2. Therapeutic strategies should be described when the distant metastasis was
confirmed after surgery.
3. Additionally, the number of patients received adjuvant chemotherapy should
be added in the results section.
4. The key messages of this manuscript are "frequent distant metastasis in
patients with EOGC" and "poor prognosis in patients with LOGC". Discuss
more detail about these results.
5. The authors only enrolled patients received surgical resection, which can be
critical limitation. Because frequent distant metastasis may be confirmed in
patients with EOGC when the cancer was first diagnosed.
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
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