Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01572-w (2021)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Total cholesterol concentration predicts the effect of plasmapheresis on
hypertriglyceridemic acute pancreatitis: a retrospective case-control study
Version: 
0 
Date: 
14 Jul 2020
Reviewer's report:
This is a study about the relation between total cholesterol (TC) and the
triglyceride (TG)-lowing effect in patients with hypertriglyceridemic acute
pancreatitis (HLAP) who receive plasmapheresis (PP) and didn't receive it.
Although interesting, there can be severe 
there are several key comments.
1. TC could be a potential biomarker to predict the effects of TG-lowing therapy;
however, in clinical practice, it is important whether the TG-lowing effects lead
to the decrease of mortality rate and severity grade in patients with HLAP.
Please show information about it.
2. How many patients with acute pancreatitis (AP)-associated death were seen in
the study? The information of mortality should be included in Table 1.
3. The authors should mention the indication and timing of PP in detail.
4. The patients with alcohol-related AP are prone to show high levels of TG.
Thus, there is a concern about commingling of AP patients caused by alcohol
with 150 HLAP patients. What do you think of the issue?
5. Administration of a large fluid volume is critical during the early phase of
acute pancreatitis. Is there a possibility that large volume fluid resuscitation
affected the blood levels of TC and TG?
6. In page 11, line 15, "patients with HTC and HTC" is correct?
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Yes
Are the methods appropriate and well described?
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No
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authors.
Yes
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No
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I am able to assess the statistics
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Needs some language corrections before being published
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