Reviewer's report
Title:Liver disease and 30-day mortality after colorectal cancer surgery: A
Danish population-based cohort study
Version: 2Date:2 December 2012
Reviewer: Lene Hjerrild H Iversen
Reviewer's report:
It is a well-written paper describing the impact of liver disease on 30-day mortality
after surgery for colorectal cancer (CRC). The topic and the results are very
interesting.
My main concern (Major compulsory revision) is that the authors seemingly don’t
distinguish between ‘type of admission’ and ‘priority of surgery’. This could
explain why the authors find an extremely high rate of acute CRC surgery even
among patients without liver disease, 32%. According to the annual review from
Danish Colorectal Cancer Group (www.dccg.dk) this rate is only 14%. In
Methods the authors report that the DNRP contain data about ‘the type of
admission (acute or elective)’, but in results and discussion they only report
‘priority of surgery’. Acute admission may not result in acute surgery. If the
authors really do mean acute surgery, a definition of acute surgery would be
helpful.
Minor comments (discretionary revisions):
Methods, page 5: ‘Non-eradicative procedures’ is an uncommon word in surgical
respect. A better and more appropriate word would be ‘non-resectional
procedures’
Discussion: Previous studies could be presented a bit more concise.
Figure 1: Why do the authors present 30-day survival curves when they do not
discuss the curves? – for instance survival of cirrhotic patients deviate from
non-cirrhotic patients less than 15 days after surgery. Otherwise presentation in a
table is sufficient.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
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' below
Reviewer's report
Title:Liver disease and 30-day mortality after colorectal cancer surgery: A
Danish population-based cohort study
Version: 2Date:2 December 2012
Reviewer: Lene Hjerrild H Iversen
Reviewer's report:
It is a well-written paper describing the impact of liver disease on 30-day mortality
after surgery for colorectal cancer (CRC). The topic and the results are very
interesting.
My main concern (Major compulsory revision) is that the authors seemingly don’t
distinguish between ‘type of admission’ and ‘priority of surgery’. This could
explain why the authors find an extremely high rate of acute CRC surgery even
among patients without liver disease, 32%. According to the annual review from
Danish Colorectal Cancer Group (www.dccg.dk) this rate is only 14%. In
Methods the authors report that the DNRP contain data about ‘the type of
admission (acute or elective)’, but in results and discussion they only report
‘priority of surgery’. Acute admission may not result in acute surgery. If the
authors really do mean acute surgery, a definition of acute surgery would be
helpful.
Minor comments (discretionary revisions):
Methods, page 5: ‘Non-eradicative procedures’ is an uncommon word in surgical
respect. A better and more appropriate word would be ‘non-resectional
procedures’
Discussion: Previous studies could be presented a bit more concise.
Figure 1: Why do the authors present 30-day survival curves when they do not
discuss the curves? – for instance survival of cirrhotic patients deviate from
non-cirrhotic patients less than 15 days after surgery. Otherwise presentation in a
table is sufficient.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
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' below
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Liver disease and 30-day mortality after colorectal cancer surgery: A
Danish population-based cohort study
Version: 2Date:2 December 2012
Reviewer: Lene Hjerrild H Iversen
Reviewer's report:
It is a well-written paper describing the impact of liver disease on 30-day mortality
after surgery for colorectal cancer (CRC). The topic and the results are very
interesting.
My main concern (Major compulsory revision) is that the authors seemingly don’t
distinguish between ‘type of admission’ and ‘priority of surgery’. This could
explain why the authors find an extremely high rate of acute CRC surgery even
among patients without liver disease, 32%. According to the annual review from
Danish Colorectal Cancer Group (www.dccg.dk) this rate is only 14%. In
Methods the authors report that the DNRP contain data about ‘the type of
admission (acute or elective)’, but in results and discussion they only report
‘priority of surgery’. Acute admission may not result in acute surgery. If the
authors really do mean acute surgery, a definition of acute surgery would be
helpful.
Minor comments (discretionary revisions):
Methods, page 5: ‘Non-eradicative procedures’ is an uncommon word in surgical
respect. A better and more appropriate word would be ‘non-resectional
procedures’
Discussion: Previous studies could be presented a bit more concise.
Figure 1: Why do the authors present 30-day survival curves when they do not
discuss the curves? – for instance survival of cirrhotic patients deviate from
non-cirrhotic patients less than 15 days after surgery. Otherwise presentation in a
table is sufficient.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
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' below
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