Title: Assessment of supportive care needs among cervical cancer patients under treatment  in
Nepal: a cross sectional study
Version: 0 Date: 22 Aug 2022
Reviewer:  Raya Yousef Al-husban
Reviewer's report:
Evaluation of the manuscript entitled
Assessment of supportive care needs among cervical cancer patients in Nepal: a cross-sectional
study for BMC Women's Health
• Kamala Dhakal
• Panpan Wang
• Joanes Faustine Mboineki
• Mikiyas Amare Getu
• Changying Chen
First of all, the researchers of this paper provide valuable and well-written work. However, the
whole paper needs to be edited.
1. in the introduction, the authors write, "Cervical cancer is in the first position among women
and second among both sexes in Nepal."
Comments 1 :
Please clarify this statement since the male doesn't have a cervix.
2. the paragraph that started with"In comparison with other gynecological cancer patients,
cervical cancer patients faced many problems: physical, psychological and social distress,
including spiritual suffering, fatigue, irritability, memory loss, decreased energy level, recurring
pain, worse emotional distress and poor quality of life."
Comments 2:
need citation
3. in  the paragraph"According to Wenzel et al.(2002), 21.3 % of the cervical cancer patients
suffered from depression and 6 % of ovarian cancer had depressive symptoms
According to Wenzel et al.(2002), 21.3 % of cervical cancer patients suffer from depression,
and 6 % of ovarian cancer had depressive symptoms."
Comments 3:
I think it is an ancient reference. Can you cite a recent one?
4. In the introduction, specify the stage of cancer trajectory of your patients
comments 4 :
I suggest indicating the type of your population and if they are under treatment, or specify they
are in the diagnosis, treatment or post-treatment, or after the completion of the treatment in the
title and the purpose of the study.
5. the paragraph started by:
("uterine cervical neoplasms"[MeSH Terms] OR ("uterine"[All Fields] AND "cervical"[All
Fields] AND "neoplasms"[All Fields]) OR "uterine cervical neoplasms"[All Fields] OR
("cervical"[All Fields] AND "cancer"[All Fields]) OR "cervical cancer"[All Fields])
AND ("cancer s"[All Fields] OR "cancerated"[All Fields] OR "canceration"[All Fields]
OR "cancerization"[All Fields] OR "cancerized"[All Fields] OR "cancerous"[All Fields]
OR "neoplasms"[MeSH Terms] OR "neoplasms"[All Fields] OR "cancer"[All Fields]
OR "cancers"[All Fields]) AND (("support"[All Fields] OR "support s"[All Fields]
OR "supported"[All Fields] OR "supporter"[All Fields] OR "supporter s"[All Fields]
OR "supporters"[All Fields] OR "supporting"[All Fields] OR "supportive"[All Fields]
OR "supportiveness"[All Fields] OR "supports"[All Fields]) AND "care"[All Fields])
AND (("support"[All Fields] OR "support s"[All Fields] OR "supported"[All Fields]
OR "supporter"[All Fields] OR "supporter s"[All Fields] OR "supporters"[All Fields]
OR "supporting"[All Fields] OR "supportive"[All Fields] OR "supportiveness"[All Fields]
OR "supports"[All Fields]) AND "care"[All Fields] AND ("health services needs and
demand"[MeSH Terms] OR ("health"[All Fields] AND "services"[All Fields] AND "needs"[All
Fields] AND "demand"[All Fields]) OR "health services needs and demand"[All Fields] OR
"needed"[All Fields] OR "needs"[All Fields] OR "needing"[All Fields])) AND ("assess"[All
Fields] OR "assessed"[All Fields] OR "assessement"[All Fields] OR "assesses"[All Fields]
OR "assessing"[All Fields] OR "assessment"[All Fields] OR "assessment s"[All Fields] OR
"assessments"[All Fields])
comments 5 :
I suggest  that this paragraph  listed above be removed from the text since the authors pointed
out the type of search engine used
6. Sampling
The purposive sampling technique was used to assess supportive care needs among 218 cervical
cancer patients [13,14, 22, 46] in selected hospitals. During the data collection period of 5
months, the researcher and research assistant went to each hospital on a particular day once a
week. The cervical cancer patients of each specific day from a particular hospital were taken as
samples: at the end of each week total samples from all hospitals were calculated. After getting
218 samples altogether from the five hospitals mentioned above, the enrollment was stopped.
Comments 6 :
Under the sampling heading ( methodology)
The purposive sampling technique differs from the approach you listed: convenience sampling.
Purposive sampling to select a rich, informative sample is more appropriate for the qualitative
study. I suggest the specification of the sampling type as convenience is better.
7. under the Demographics and disease-related characteristics of respondents  section
The paragraph "Moreover, 67.9% of the respondents were getting the treatment through
radiation and chemotherapy modalities, and 92.2% of the respondents had less than one year of
disease duration; 61.9% of the respondents were living together with a partner, and 38.1% of the
respondents were not living together with their partner. Likewise, 71.1% of the respondents did
not participate in sexual activity, whereas 28.9% used to participate in sexual activity. (Refer
to Table 1)
comments 7 :
No need to write all the demographic information in the text just select the significant findings ,
since you have mentioned them in the table
I suggest deleting this paragraph
8. Table 4: Association between domains of supportive care needs and selected variables (n=
218)
comments 8:
Please re-summarize this table since it includes too much information, it is confusing, and
include many details
Just write if there is an association
And write in the text
For example
There was no association between age, income ---- and the supportive care need.
9.  in the paragraph,  under the limitation, "So, it does not discover the visitor's economic, social,
and support needs, which are crucial to assessing and providing supportive care for cervical
cancer patients."
Comments 9:
Please indicate what you mean by the word "visitor" it is better to replace it with the caregiver.
10 . No   clinical implication  section
Comments 10 : The researcher can provide clinical implications that come out of this study