Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01471-0 (2020)

Reviewer’ s report
Title: Peritumoral ductular reaction can be a prognostic factor for intrahepatic cholangiocellular
carcinoma
Version: 2Date: 28 Jul 2020
Reviewer's report:
In the method, line 50, the author states:
'The cumulative overall survival...'
The word, cumulative, is not necessary.
In the section 'Peritumoral DR was related to local inflammation and fibrosis', lines 58-59, the
term 'paralleled with' is not clear, the reviewer suggests another verb: 'is positively correlated with'.
In the section 'Peritumoral DR was related to the prognosis of ICC', lines 39-48, the author
presented multivariate regression, Cox proportional hazard ratio of overall and disease-freesurvival (table 2-3). The sample size(n=47) would limit the power of statistical inferences. Theirexploratory variables are partially dependent on each other; the reviewer thinks there would bemulticollinearity of the data matrix. The estimation is less precise than the independent columns.The reviewer suggests the author put table 2 and table 3 in the appendix and describes the results.
Figure 6b is the correlation between the grades of DR and alpha-SMA, the reviewer thinks the
presentation should be as that of figure 2; therefore, readers would interpret their findings easily.
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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?
YesAre the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?YesIs the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
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