Review for 10.1186/s12876-021-01853-y (2021)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Shared Decision Making in Pregnancy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease:
Design of a Patient Orientated Decision Aid
Version: 
0 
Date: 
13 Apr 2021
Reviewer's report:
PEER REVIEWER ASSESSMENTS: 
OBJECTIVE - Full research articles: is there a clear objective that addresses a
testable research question(s) (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 technical rigor
to allow confidence in the results?
No - there are major issues
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?
No - there are minor issues
OVERALL MANUSCRIPT POTENTIAL - Is the current version of this work
technically sound? If not, can revisions be made to make the work technically
sound?
Probably - with minor revisions
PEER REVIEWER COMMENTS: 
GENERAL COMMENTS: 
This is a novel and important topic - decision making regarding pregnancy for
women with IBD. The authors have used a strong framework (IPDAS) to guide
their preliminary development of a patient decision aid on this topic. The authors
describe their steps in detail; I think more synthesis is needed to make the paper
better understood by readers.
REQUESTED REVISIONS: 
While the methods were appropriate, there is a moderate flaw in the execution.
The authors do not describe why only 1 focus group of each type was conducted
(patients, clinicians). For the patient group, only 3 people participated, and all
were from the same reproductive stage. While the authors correctly describe this
as a limitation, they also describe that the prototype scope was altered to respond
to the dominant theme in the patient focus group. Given the clear limitation of
the patient focus group sample, further justification is needed for not conducting
another group or following up individually with patients from other reproductive
stages and for making major decisions based on this limited sample.
What was the sample size goal of 4 participants per stage based on?
The qualitative analysis approach was not described in the methods section.
The authors present a lot of tables given such small numbers of participants. In
Table 1: Patient they are actually presenting the raw data for 2 participants.
Table 3 is described as a summary but is also quite long - especially the
suggested improvements section. It is easy to get lost in the many steps and long
tables with few participants. Can the authors further synthesize this work to
make it easier for the reader to follow and make sense of the important points?
ADDITIONAL REQUESTS/SUGGESTIONS: 
Minor - the last sentence of the abstract Objective appears to be incomplete.
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
No
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
Yes
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free
from apparent manipulation?
Yes