Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 24, 2020
Decision Letter - Robert Jeenchen Chen, Editor

PONE-D-20-30070

The risk factors for treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Jeong,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please revise according to reviewers' suggestion.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 27 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Robert Jeenchen Chen, MD, MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Please include the date(s) on which you accessed the databases or records to obtain the data used in your study.

3. Please describe any inclusion and exclusion criteria used to determine your final cohort.

4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Treatment-related mortality (TRM) after renal transplantation is a concept different from disease-related mortality and appeared to be a very prevalent entity.

Strengths:

- There are scarce data in scientific literature about TRM within 1 or 3 months after kidney transplantation.

- Authors collected an important amount of data from a very large cohort of patients using a national population based database, which included information about a total of 16,073 kidney recipients.

This article would be a valuable contribution to the medical literature to encourage further discussion on this entity.

The writing is clear and easily understandable.

The Authors have worked hard to improve this article, and they have met all criticisms raised by referees.

I feel the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Plos One.

Probably a better title could include the concept of an early mortality after renal transplant, and could exclude the origin of the database and the years of observation (“using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016”). This might encourage the reader more.

For example,

The risk factors for early treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation - A nationwide cohort study

Or The risk factors for treatment-related mortality within first three months after kidney transplantation

Reviewer #2: The paper entitle " The risk factors for treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016", is a well written manuscript, the data is well analysed and proper statistical analysis is applied. All the significant outcomes were well discussed and very comprehensive conclusion was made, I highly recommend this paper for publication.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 1

Journal requirements:

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

� We have checked the PLOS ONE style templates and confirmed our manuscript to meet requirements. The file naming also checked.

2. Please include the date(s) on which you accessed the databases or records to obtain the data used in your study.

� We accessed the Korean Network for Organ Sharing database on June 5, 2020 to obtain additional information for the revision of a previously reported manuscript associated with treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation. We found a number of important factors for treatment-related mortality, which could not be integrated in the previous study. Therefore, we have persistently accessed the Korean Network for Organ Sharing database extracted from 40 medical centers to identify the risk factors including routine laboratory data until September 23, 2020. We have added the dates and contact information for a data access committee to the revised Data accessibility statement section (page 20, lines 349 to 353) as follows.

“We had accessed the Korean Network for Organ Sharing database from June 5, 2020 to September 23, 2020. Contact information for a data access committee is listed as follows: National Organ and Blood Management Institute of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Tel: 82-2-2628-3602; Official internet site: https://www.konos.go.kr/konosis.”

3. Please describe any inclusion and exclusion criteria used to determine your final cohort.

� As indicated by the reviewer, we have described inclusion and exclusion criteria, which are similar to our previous study (reference 16) in the revised Materials and Methods section (page 5, lines 98 to 101) as follows.

“This study included all patients enrolled for kidney transplantation in the KONOS system of the KCDC between January 2002 and December 2016. We excluded patients who did not have complete demographic information and who concurrently underwent other organ transplantations [16].”

4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

� We have checked the deposited data in Harvard Dataverse. The accessible DOI provided by the Harvard Dataverse was https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/G4OLYV described in the Data accessibility statement section (page 20, lines 348 to 349) as follows. We have published the dataset immediately and the certificate have been attached to the revised cover letter.

“The data involved in this study have been deposited in Harvard Dataverse, and are accessible through https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/G4OLYV.”

Response to the reviewer’s comments

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

� We have corrected and checked that the revised manuscript described a technically sound piece of scientific research and that the data supported the conclusions.

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

� We have checked that the statistical analysis has been conducted appropriately and rigorously.

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

� According to the journal requirements, we have provided the accessible DOI from the Harvard Dataverse for deposited data. Contact information for a data access committee and the dates obtaining the data were described in the revised Data accessibility statement section. We have added these statement to the revised cover letter.

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

� We used manuscript editing service before submission.

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Response to reviewer #1’s comments

Treatment-related mortality (TRM) after renal transplantation is a concept different from disease-related mortality and appeared to be a very prevalent entity.

Strengths:

- There are scarce data in scientific literature about TRM within 1 or 3 months after kidney transplantation.

- Authors collected an important amount of data from a very large cohort of patients using a national population based database, which included information about a total of 16,073 kidney recipients.

This article would be a valuable contribution to the medical literature to encourage further discussion on this entity.

The writing is clear and easily understandable.

The Authors have worked hard to improve this article, and they have met all criticisms raised by referees.

I feel the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Plos One.

Probably a better title could include the concept of an early mortality after renal transplant, and could exclude the origin of the database and the years of observation (“using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016”). This might encourage the reader more.

For example,

The risk factors for early treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation - A nationwide cohort study

Or The risk factors for treatment-related mortality within first three months after kidney transplantation.

� Response 1: As suggested by reviewer, we have changed the title from “The risk factors for treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016” to “The risk factors for treatment-related mortality within first three months after kidney transplantation” in the revised manuscript.

Response to reviewer #2’s comments

The paper entitle " The risk factors for treatment-related mortality in kidney transplantation using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing Database, 2002 to 2016", is a well written manuscript, the data is well analysed and proper statistical analysis is applied. All the significant outcomes were well discussed and very comprehensive conclusion was made, I highly recommend this paper for publication.

� Response 2: Thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript. We are very pleased to receive your valuable comment for our manuscript. We hope it will contribute to better outcome of kidney recipients.

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

� We have uploaded our figure files (Fig 1.tif, and Fig 2.tif) to the PACE digital diagnostic tool to meet PLOS requirements. The preview files (Preview_20201028233814619.pdf, and Preview_20201028233901869.pdf) were generated and checked.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.doc
Decision Letter - Robert Jeenchen Chen, Editor

The risk factors for treatment-related mortality within first three months after kidney transplantation

PONE-D-20-30070R1

Dear Dr. Jeong,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Robert Jeenchen Chen, MD, MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Treatment-related mortality (TRM) after renal transplantation is a concept different from disease-related mortality and appeared to be a very prevalent entity.

Strengths:

- There are scarce data in scientific literature about TRM within 1 or 3 months after kidney transplantation.

- Authors collected an important amount of data from a very large cohort of patients using a national population based database, which included information about a total of 16,073 kidney recipients.

This article would be a valuable contribution to the medical literature to encourage further discussion on this entity.

The writing is clear and easily understandable.

The Authors have worked hard to improve this article, and they have met all criticisms raised by referees.

I feel the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Plos One.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Robert Jeenchen Chen, Editor

PONE-D-20-30070R1

The risk factors for treatment-related mortality within first three months after kidney transplantation

Dear Dr. Jeong:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Robert Jeenchen Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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