Reviewer's report
Title:Factors Impacting Physicians' Decisions to Prevent Variceal Hemorrhage
Version:2Date:24 February 2015
Reviewer: Chien-Ning Hsu
Reviewer's report:
In their manuscript Yan and co-workers describe physicians’ characteristics are
associated with treatment preferences for preventing variceal bleeding based on
the analysis of the 110 gastroenterologists online survey results. They report a
larger group of 80 physicians were influenced primarily depending on the ability
to visually confirm eradications of varices, and a small group of 30 physicians
were influenced primarily by the side effect and mechanism of beta blockers.
Factor associated with treatment preference was explored in the study but does
not yield any substantial insight that was not already known.
• Major Compulsory Revisions
1.The authors presented 10 relevant medication attributes to evaluate how
physician decided for prevention of variceal bleeding between beta blockers (BB)
and endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) (Fig 2). However, the authors did not
present the relative strength or importance of each medical attribute in the
Best-Worst scaling questions between two distinct groups.
2.Please provide information how 10 medical attributes were identified during the
survey development. According to 39% of physicians chose combination therapy
of BB and EVL, do the authors have a hypothesis about patient-related and
non-clinical features may impact physician choices on treatment?
3.The authors found most respondents stated that less than 25% of their clinical
practice was devoted to patients with liver disease. The results of specific
attributes between BB and EVL groups may only generalize to physicians with
certain experience in cirrhotic patients.
What would be interesting is the study to demonstrate practice patterns of
preventive therapies in cirrhotic patients and identify factors associated with
differences in practice that can reflect physicians concerns in daily care setting
for improvement in primary bleeding prevention.
• Minor Essential Revisions
Please provide a rationale or benefit of using Youden balanced-incomplete block
design in the study.
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
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.
Reviewer's report
Title:Factors Impacting Physicians' Decisions to Prevent Variceal Hemorrhage
Version:2Date:24 February 2015
Reviewer: Chien-Ning Hsu
Reviewer's report:
In their manuscript Yan and co-workers describe physicians’ characteristics are
associated with treatment preferences for preventing variceal bleeding based on
the analysis of the 110 gastroenterologists online survey results. They report a
larger group of 80 physicians were influenced primarily depending on the ability
to visually confirm eradications of varices, and a small group of 30 physicians
were influenced primarily by the side effect and mechanism of beta blockers.
Factor associated with treatment preference was explored in the study but does
not yield any substantial insight that was not already known.
• Major Compulsory Revisions
1.The authors presented 10 relevant medication attributes to evaluate how
physician decided for prevention of variceal bleeding between beta blockers (BB)
and endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) (Fig 2). However, the authors did not
present the relative strength or importance of each medical attribute in the
Best-Worst scaling questions between two distinct groups.
2.Please provide information how 10 medical attributes were identified during the
survey development. According to 39% of physicians chose combination therapy
of BB and EVL, do the authors have a hypothesis about patient-related and
non-clinical features may impact physician choices on treatment?
3.The authors found most respondents stated that less than 25% of their clinical
practice was devoted to patients with liver disease. The results of specific
attributes between BB and EVL groups may only generalize to physicians with
certain experience in cirrhotic patients.
What would be interesting is the study to demonstrate practice patterns of
preventive therapies in cirrhotic patients and identify factors associated with
differences in practice that can reflect physicians concerns in daily care setting
for improvement in primary bleeding prevention.
• Minor Essential Revisions
Please provide a rationale or benefit of using Youden balanced-incomplete block
design in the study.
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
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.
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Factors Impacting Physicians' Decisions to Prevent Variceal Hemorrhage
Version:2Date:24 February 2015
Reviewer: Chien-Ning Hsu
Reviewer's report:
In their manuscript Yan and co-workers describe physicians’ characteristics are
associated with treatment preferences for preventing variceal bleeding based on
the analysis of the 110 gastroenterologists online survey results. They report a
larger group of 80 physicians were influenced primarily depending on the ability
to visually confirm eradications of varices, and a small group of 30 physicians
were influenced primarily by the side effect and mechanism of beta blockers.
Factor associated with treatment preference was explored in the study but does
not yield any substantial insight that was not already known.
• Major Compulsory Revisions
1.The authors presented 10 relevant medication attributes to evaluate how
physician decided for prevention of variceal bleeding between beta blockers (BB)
and endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) (Fig 2). However, the authors did not
present the relative strength or importance of each medical attribute in the
Best-Worst scaling questions between two distinct groups.
2.Please provide information how 10 medical attributes were identified during the
survey development. According to 39% of physicians chose combination therapy
of BB and EVL, do the authors have a hypothesis about patient-related and
non-clinical features may impact physician choices on treatment?
3.The authors found most respondents stated that less than 25% of their clinical
practice was devoted to patients with liver disease. The results of specific
attributes between BB and EVL groups may only generalize to physicians with
certain experience in cirrhotic patients.
What would be interesting is the study to demonstrate practice patterns of
preventive therapies in cirrhotic patients and identify factors associated with
differences in practice that can reflect physicians concerns in daily care setting
for improvement in primary bleeding prevention.
• Minor Essential Revisions
Please provide a rationale or benefit of using Youden balanced-incomplete block
design in the study.
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
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.
assistant