Reviewer's report 
 The risk of menstrual abnormalities after tubal sterilization: a case control study Title: 
 3  28 February 2005 Version: Date: 
 Kirsten Duckitt Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
Quite a small study compared with several large prospective studies already published on the 
subject 
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be reached) 
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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) 1. In abstract remove 2 instances of unnecessary capital letters (syndrome and ligation) 
2. Reference no.8 needs capital letter 
3. Reference number 13 needs capital letter for Layde and the correct spelling for DeStefano 4.In discussion, the space needs removing from the mention of Bhiwandiwala. 5. In methods 'referred' is spelt wrong 
6. In results anovulatory is spelt wrong 
7. Pomeroy requires a capital letter as is an eponymous term 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
1. Provide references to percentages quoted in Background. 
2. In methods use tubal ligation rather than tubectomy to keep consistency. 
3. In results omit first two sentences as they repeat some of methods. 
4. In conclusion, keep to tubal ligation rather than tubal sterilisation for consistency. 5. In conclusion the reasons for the results differing from Kasonde and Bonnars work may because Kasonde and Bonnar objectively measured blood loss whereas this study relied on subjective self 
reported amounts of blood loss. This may be worth mentioning. 
6. I think psychiatric is used in the wrong way in the discussion - it might be better to talk of women's 
differing perceptions or psychological reaction to tubal ligation rather than imply a psychiatric illness 
7. Suggestions for style/grammatical improvements: 
Background: 
Replace 'are going to be continued' with 'continue' Replace 'failure of control' with 'failure to control' Methods: 
Replace 'for assessing' with 'to assess' 
Replace 'those had' with 'those who had' Replace 'were remained' with 'remained' Replace 'the indicative' with 'indicative' 
Discussion: 
Replace 'solely cessation' with 'solely to cessation' 
Replace 'For excluding' with 'In order to exclude' 
Replace 'physiologic' with 'a physiologic' 
Replace 'by the time' with 'at the time' Replace 'for excluding' with 'in order to exclude' Replace'has more menstrual irregularities effect' with 'leads to more menstrual irregularities than..' 
Conclusion 
Rewrite first sentence e.g. Women who have undergone a Pomeroy type of tubal ligation have no more menstrual abnormalities than those without tubal ligation. 
 Accept after minor essential revisions What next?: 
 An article of limited interest Level of interest: 
 Needs some language corrections before being published Quality of written English: 
 No Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I declare that I have no competing interests