Reviewer's report
Title:Quality of life following liver transplantation: a comparative study between
Familial Amyloid Neuropathy and liver disease patients
Version: 1Date:9 May 2009
Reviewer: Raaj Praseedom
Reviewer's report:
Major essential revisions
1) Please indicate the selection criteria for the study group. Are these 62 patients
consecutive liver transplant recipients? If not, what are the exclusion criteria?
Give details on the patients excluded from the study during the study period with
reasons for exclusion.
2) What was the QOL in these 2 groups compared to the general Portuguese
population? Were they significantly different pre and post operatively?
3) Did age, sex, retransplantation, complications, repeat surgery etc have an
effect on the QOL?
4) Essential surgical details of the recipients are missing e.g. re-laparotomy,
surgical complications, hospital stay, type of donor (?living donor) etc
Minor essential revisions
1) Please make English language corrections!
2) The 'Background' section has numerous mistakes e.g. repeat usage of month,
paranthesis on 8TTR, spelling of methionine, choroid plexus and not choroids
plexus,
3) 'QOL evaluation' section has a few mistakes e.g. commas after each
subscales on SF36 missing, change 'witch' to which please!
4) Change 'an hepatologist' to a hepatologist.
5) Some of the references in the text are in superscripts and some in
paranthesis. Change to uniform requirements for the journal.
6) Sales-Luis e col [14] - what is e col? is it et al? Why is the text here in a
different colour?
Discretionary revisions
1) QOL is often subjective especially the difference in QOL as perceived by an
individual. This is difficult to estimate and a scientific way of doing so is to use
some thing like a Ferrans & Powar questionnaire which looks at the difference in
QOL as perceived by the patient. For e.g. some patients may have an
improvement in their SF36 scores, but they do not necessarily perceive an
improvement in their QOL and vice versa. Consider acknowledging the use of a
different dedicated QOL instrument in these patients (Desai et al Liver Transpl
2008;14(10):1473-9 and the editorial)
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Reviewer's report
Title:Quality of life following liver transplantation: a comparative study between
Familial Amyloid Neuropathy and liver disease patients
Version: 1Date:9 May 2009
Reviewer: Raaj Praseedom
Reviewer's report:
Major essential revisions
1) Please indicate the selection criteria for the study group. Are these 62 patients
consecutive liver transplant recipients? If not, what are the exclusion criteria?
Give details on the patients excluded from the study during the study period with
reasons for exclusion.
2) What was the QOL in these 2 groups compared to the general Portuguese
population? Were they significantly different pre and post operatively?
3) Did age, sex, retransplantation, complications, repeat surgery etc have an
effect on the QOL?
4) Essential surgical details of the recipients are missing e.g. re-laparotomy,
surgical complications, hospital stay, type of donor (?living donor) etc
Minor essential revisions
1) Please make English language corrections!
2) The 'Background' section has numerous mistakes e.g. repeat usage of month,
paranthesis on 8TTR, spelling of methionine, choroid plexus and not choroids
plexus,
3) 'QOL evaluation' section has a few mistakes e.g. commas after each
subscales on SF36 missing, change 'witch' to which please!
4) Change 'an hepatologist' to a hepatologist.
5) Some of the references in the text are in superscripts and some in
paranthesis. Change to uniform requirements for the journal.
6) Sales-Luis e col [14] - what is e col? is it et al? Why is the text here in a
different colour?
Discretionary revisions
1) QOL is often subjective especially the difference in QOL as perceived by an
individual. This is difficult to estimate and a scientific way of doing so is to use
some thing like a Ferrans & Powar questionnaire which looks at the difference in
QOL as perceived by the patient. For e.g. some patients may have an
improvement in their SF36 scores, but they do not necessarily perceive an
improvement in their QOL and vice versa. Consider acknowledging the use of a
different dedicated QOL instrument in these patients (Desai et al Liver Transpl
2008;14(10):1473-9 and the editorial)
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Quality of life following liver transplantation: a comparative study between
Familial Amyloid Neuropathy and liver disease patients
Version: 1Date:9 May 2009
Reviewer: Raaj Praseedom
Reviewer's report:
Major essential revisions
1) Please indicate the selection criteria for the study group. Are these 62 patients
consecutive liver transplant recipients? If not, what are the exclusion criteria?
Give details on the patients excluded from the study during the study period with
reasons for exclusion.
2) What was the QOL in these 2 groups compared to the general Portuguese
population? Were they significantly different pre and post operatively?
3) Did age, sex, retransplantation, complications, repeat surgery etc have an
effect on the QOL?
4) Essential surgical details of the recipients are missing e.g. re-laparotomy,
surgical complications, hospital stay, type of donor (?living donor) etc
Minor essential revisions
1) Please make English language corrections!
2) The 'Background' section has numerous mistakes e.g. repeat usage of month,
paranthesis on 8TTR, spelling of methionine, choroid plexus and not choroids
plexus,
3) 'QOL evaluation' section has a few mistakes e.g. commas after each
subscales on SF36 missing, change 'witch' to which please!
4) Change 'an hepatologist' to a hepatologist.
5) Some of the references in the text are in superscripts and some in
paranthesis. Change to uniform requirements for the journal.
6) Sales-Luis e col [14] - what is e col? is it et al? Why is the text here in a
different colour?
Discretionary revisions
1) QOL is often subjective especially the difference in QOL as perceived by an
individual. This is difficult to estimate and a scientific way of doing so is to use
some thing like a Ferrans & Powar questionnaire which looks at the difference in
QOL as perceived by the patient. For e.g. some patients may have an
improvement in their SF36 scores, but they do not necessarily perceive an
improvement in their QOL and vice versa. Consider acknowledging the use of a
different dedicated QOL instrument in these patients (Desai et al Liver Transpl
2008;14(10):1473-9 and the editorial)
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
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