Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-7-30 (2007)

Reviewer's report 
 Endoscopists attitudes on the publication of quality data for endoscopic procedures: a cross-sectionalTitle: 
survey 
 1  9 March 2007 Version: Date: 
 Emiel Verdaasdonk Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
The paper covers an interesting topic: the opinions of endoscopist towards the usefulness and practicality 
of making ‘quality outcome data’ available to the public. The authors conclude that “consideration must be 
given to the value of such data and its acceptability”. 
The paper is well written and to the reviewer’s knowledge this study is one of the first to address 
endoscopists’ attitudes to such data being published. The response rate of the questionnaire is high (78%). 
However, there are some questions that need to be addressed and issues that have to be clarified. (see for 
details major and minor revisions) 
In the future performance data of clinics or individual doctors will become increasingly important to the 
public. Patients demand to have access to this data. If medical societies do not decide what information 
should be given to the public, governments and other organisations will do that for them. The data in this 
study suggest that endoscopists are not very enthusiastic in providing the data they are currently collection (fairly unacceptable=2 to neutral=3). This is a problem. The conclusion of this paper should state this more 
clearly. 
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be 
reached) 
Title page is missing 
Abstract is missing 
Methods 
Methods of analysis: What statistical test is exactly used? Please specify. 
Results 
Why are the table titles placed between the sentences of the general text? This is confusing. Table 3 There is a large spread (high SD) in answers of the respondents. Therefore, the data could better be 
presented in small histograms showing the percentages or number of respondents for each Likert scale 
point. Box-plots could also be more informative. 
Discussion 
The conclusion of the paper should be less vague and clearly state that the data in this study suggest that 
endoscopists’ consider presenting the current outcome data to the public “fairly unacceptable and not very useful” to “neutral”. 
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author can be trusted to correct) 
Methods 
Provide a table in the Method section or Results section with the definitions of the used Likert points as is presented on Part 3 of the additional files. 
Results 
Page 3 last paragraph about other frequently collected data. Do the numbers between brackets mean 
number of respondents or percentages? Clarify by writing (n=2 or 2% or etc). 
Table 1 (page 10) 
Provide a total number of the category “current post” Make a clear separation between the various subcategories of data (current post, time since…, procedures 
performed etc) 
Give the full name for IQR The subcategory “Procedures currently performed” is probably the number but this is not very clear. Please make this clear. 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
Discussion 
Please give a comment on the fact that in this study no questions were asked about the general opinion or attitude of endoscopist about the right of patients to be objectively informed about the performance of their doctor. 
On page 7 third paragraph “Patients are still far more...” I think this sentence is too long. Please split 
sentence into two separated sentences. 
References 
Provide a title of internet sites and state when this site is accessed. 
 Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major What next?: 
compulsory revisions 
 An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I declare that I have no competing interests