Reviewer's report
Title:The galactose elimination capacity and mortality in 781 Danish patients
with newly-diagnosed liver cirrhosis: a cohort study
Version: 1Date:17 December 2008
Reviewer: Teh-Ia Huo
Reviewer's report:
The authors investigated 781 cirrhotic patients undergoing GEC test and their
long-term outcome. They found that GEC is a useful prognostic test for cirrhotic
patients. The idea of using GEC to evaluate liver functions is not new. Besides,
there are some flaws in this study that may deserve the authors’ attention.
1. The methodology of the GEC test should be given in detail. References 14, 16
and 17 were published during 1964-1977, which has been quite a while from
now.
2. The diagnostic criteria of cirrhosis were not given. Different hospitals may use
different criteria that may result in an inhomogeneous group of patients. How
many of them actually had a histological diagnosis of cirrhosis?
3. The risk of mortality in cirrhotic patients is best expressed as the risk ratio per
unit increase of the GEC mmol/min after adjusting for other confounding factors
in the Cox proportional hazard model.
4. More data should be reported in the Results section. Survival curves using
different cutoffs of GEC should be plotted against time to show how GEC level
may be associated with the short and long-term survival. In the last sentence of
the Results, the authors stated that “… … and was also present among the 29%
of patients with comorbidity”. What are other comorbidities? And how did these
comorbidities affect the outcome in this study?
5. It is interesting to know whether other liver functional assay, such as ICG test,
was done for the study patients? Which is more accurate?
6. There is not much new information in the Discussion.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:The galactose elimination capacity and mortality in 781 Danish patients
with newly-diagnosed liver cirrhosis: a cohort study
Version: 1Date:17 December 2008
Reviewer: Teh-Ia Huo
Reviewer's report:
The authors investigated 781 cirrhotic patients undergoing GEC test and their
long-term outcome. They found that GEC is a useful prognostic test for cirrhotic
patients. The idea of using GEC to evaluate liver functions is not new. Besides,
there are some flaws in this study that may deserve the authors’ attention.
1. The methodology of the GEC test should be given in detail. References 14, 16
and 17 were published during 1964-1977, which has been quite a while from
now.
2. The diagnostic criteria of cirrhosis were not given. Different hospitals may use
different criteria that may result in an inhomogeneous group of patients. How
many of them actually had a histological diagnosis of cirrhosis?
3. The risk of mortality in cirrhotic patients is best expressed as the risk ratio per
unit increase of the GEC mmol/min after adjusting for other confounding factors
in the Cox proportional hazard model.
4. More data should be reported in the Results section. Survival curves using
different cutoffs of GEC should be plotted against time to show how GEC level
may be associated with the short and long-term survival. In the last sentence of
the Results, the authors stated that “… … and was also present among the 29%
of patients with comorbidity”. What are other comorbidities? And how did these
comorbidities affect the outcome in this study?
5. It is interesting to know whether other liver functional assay, such as ICG test,
was done for the study patients? Which is more accurate?
6. There is not much new information in the Discussion.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:The galactose elimination capacity and mortality in 781 Danish patients
with newly-diagnosed liver cirrhosis: a cohort study
Version: 1Date:17 December 2008
Reviewer: Teh-Ia Huo
Reviewer's report:
The authors investigated 781 cirrhotic patients undergoing GEC test and their
long-term outcome. They found that GEC is a useful prognostic test for cirrhotic
patients. The idea of using GEC to evaluate liver functions is not new. Besides,
there are some flaws in this study that may deserve the authors’ attention.
1. The methodology of the GEC test should be given in detail. References 14, 16
and 17 were published during 1964-1977, which has been quite a while from
now.
2. The diagnostic criteria of cirrhosis were not given. Different hospitals may use
different criteria that may result in an inhomogeneous group of patients. How
many of them actually had a histological diagnosis of cirrhosis?
3. The risk of mortality in cirrhotic patients is best expressed as the risk ratio per
unit increase of the GEC mmol/min after adjusting for other confounding factors
in the Cox proportional hazard model.
4. More data should be reported in the Results section. Survival curves using
different cutoffs of GEC should be plotted against time to show how GEC level
may be associated with the short and long-term survival. In the last sentence of
the Results, the authors stated that “… … and was also present among the 29%
of patients with comorbidity”. What are other comorbidities? And how did these
comorbidities affect the outcome in this study?
5. It is interesting to know whether other liver functional assay, such as ICG test,
was done for the study patients? Which is more accurate?
6. There is not much new information in the Discussion.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
assistant