Reviewer's report
Title:Plastic or metal stents for benign biliary strictures: a systematic review
Version: 1Date:12 August 2009
Reviewer: Michel Kahaleh
Reviewer's report:
The authors are publishing a systematic review comparing plastic to metal stents
for benign biliary strictures: unfortunately instead on focusing on plastic versus
USEMS, they incorporated limited data (from 2 studies) on CSEMS which
confuses their work.
Major Compulsory Revisions
1-Remove all data on CSEMS and focus the whole work including conclusions
from that paper on analyzing USEMS versus plastic stents)
2-Comparing metal versus plastic stents without comparing the number of ERCP
sessions in each group is not fair. PLease provide the mean session of each
group and assess if this difference is statistically significant.
3-USEMS are typically not removed, or can be very challenging to remove. A
point has to be made to clarify that to the reader.
4-Indication for placement and etiology of benign biliary stricture need to be well
documented and analyzed. Statistical analysis should be performed to assess
how comparable those 2 groups are.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have received research funding from Olympus, COnmed, Boston-Scientific,
Axcan Pharma and Alimaxx.
Reviewer's report
Title:Plastic or metal stents for benign biliary strictures: a systematic review
Version: 1Date:12 August 2009
Reviewer: Michel Kahaleh
Reviewer's report:
The authors are publishing a systematic review comparing plastic to metal stents
for benign biliary strictures: unfortunately instead on focusing on plastic versus
USEMS, they incorporated limited data (from 2 studies) on CSEMS which
confuses their work.
Major Compulsory Revisions
1-Remove all data on CSEMS and focus the whole work including conclusions
from that paper on analyzing USEMS versus plastic stents)
2-Comparing metal versus plastic stents without comparing the number of ERCP
sessions in each group is not fair. PLease provide the mean session of each
group and assess if this difference is statistically significant.
3-USEMS are typically not removed, or can be very challenging to remove. A
point has to be made to clarify that to the reader.
4-Indication for placement and etiology of benign biliary stricture need to be well
documented and analyzed. Statistical analysis should be performed to assess
how comparable those 2 groups are.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have received research funding from Olympus, COnmed, Boston-Scientific,
Axcan Pharma and Alimaxx.
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Plastic or metal stents for benign biliary strictures: a systematic review
Version: 1Date:12 August 2009
Reviewer: Michel Kahaleh
Reviewer's report:
The authors are publishing a systematic review comparing plastic to metal stents
for benign biliary strictures: unfortunately instead on focusing on plastic versus
USEMS, they incorporated limited data (from 2 studies) on CSEMS which
confuses their work.
Major Compulsory Revisions
1-Remove all data on CSEMS and focus the whole work including conclusions
from that paper on analyzing USEMS versus plastic stents)
2-Comparing metal versus plastic stents without comparing the number of ERCP
sessions in each group is not fair. PLease provide the mean session of each
group and assess if this difference is statistically significant.
3-USEMS are typically not removed, or can be very challenging to remove. A
point has to be made to clarify that to the reader.
4-Indication for placement and etiology of benign biliary stricture need to be well
documented and analyzed. Statistical analysis should be performed to assess
how comparable those 2 groups are.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have received research funding from Olympus, COnmed, Boston-Scientific,
Axcan Pharma and Alimaxx.
assistant