Title: The Prognostic Value of AST-Lymphocyte Ratio Index in Liver Cancer Patients Treated
with TACE: A Systematic Review and Single-Center Retrospective Study
Version: 2 Date: 25 Mar 2025
Reviewer's report:
The two separate components of this manuscript  are
a meta-analysis of prior studies and a single-institution retrospective study. The retrospective
study
Given various ALRI cutoffs among the prior studies, meta-analysis didn't  attempt to investigate
deeper to  reconcile the nuance and provide a pooled cutoff (think of methods like the bivariate
random-effects model ).  Hence,  there's no contribution to adding any new evidence to the
published data.
The retrospective clinical study introduced a new cutoff without reconcile the
difference from the prior studies, either.  There's perhaps baseline characteristics difference
between author's cohort and historical data. (The cutoff is much lower than the majority of
cutoffs from other articles, except Zheng's ) .  There's a great need to explain this.  What's more,
tumor size and number are all independently predictive of OS,  which means ALRI does not
count tumor burden itself.  There's a great interest to add tumor factor into the prediction model.
Lastly, this retrospective analysis is only based on 127 cases , which are much less than other
studies. Unless the population is significantly different from other studies,  very limited value
is added to existing literature.
The manuscript needs grammar check and proofreading before resubmission
Title: The Prognostic Value of AST-Lymphocyte Ratio Index in Liver Cancer Patients Treated
with TACE: A Systematic Review and Single-Center Retrospective Study
Version: 2 Date: 25 Mar 2025
Reviewer's report:
The two separate components of this manuscript  are
a meta-analysis of prior studies and a single-institution retrospective study. The retrospective
study
Given various ALRI cutoffs among the prior studies, meta-analysis didn't  attempt to investigate
deeper to  reconcile the nuance and provide a pooled cutoff (think of methods like the bivariate
random-effects model ).  Hence,  there's no contribution to adding any new evidence to the
published data.
The retrospective clinical study introduced a new cutoff without reconcile the
difference from the prior studies, either.  There's perhaps baseline characteristics difference
between author's cohort and historical data. (The cutoff is much lower than the majority of
cutoffs from other articles, except Zheng's ) .  There's a great need to explain this.  What's more,
tumor size and number are all independently predictive of OS,  which means ALRI does not
count tumor burden itself.  There's a great interest to add tumor factor into the prediction model.
Lastly, this retrospective analysis is only based on 127 cases , which are much less than other
studies. Unless the population is significantly different from other studies,  very limited value
is added to existing literature.
The manuscript needs grammar check and proofreading before resubmission
Please review this paper.
user
Title: The Prognostic Value of AST-Lymphocyte Ratio Index in Liver Cancer Patients Treated
with TACE: A Systematic Review and Single-Center Retrospective Study
Version: 2 Date: 25 Mar 2025
Reviewer's report:
The two separate components of this manuscript  are
a meta-analysis of prior studies and a single-institution retrospective study. The retrospective
study
Given various ALRI cutoffs among the prior studies, meta-analysis didn't  attempt to investigate
deeper to  reconcile the nuance and provide a pooled cutoff (think of methods like the bivariate
random-effects model ).  Hence,  there's no contribution to adding any new evidence to the
published data.
The retrospective clinical study introduced a new cutoff without reconcile the
difference from the prior studies, either.  There's perhaps baseline characteristics difference
between author's cohort and historical data. (The cutoff is much lower than the majority of
cutoffs from other articles, except Zheng's ) .  There's a great need to explain this.  What's more,
tumor size and number are all independently predictive of OS,  which means ALRI does not
count tumor burden itself.  There's a great interest to add tumor factor into the prediction model.
Lastly, this retrospective analysis is only based on 127 cases , which are much less than other
studies. Unless the population is significantly different from other studies,  very limited value
is added to existing literature.
The manuscript needs grammar check and proofreading before resubmission
assistant