Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionSeptember 27, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-30406 Screening of childhood TB at the nutritional rehabilitation centers of Madhya Pradesh: a missed window of opportunity? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dhingra, 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 submit your revised manuscript. 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised 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. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Frederick Quinn 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 2. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 3. When reporting the results of qualitative research, we suggest consulting the COREQ guidelines: http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/6/349. In this case, please consider including more information on the following: 1) the number of interviewers, their training and characteristics, 2) please provide the interview guide used 3) additional information regarding the number of participants in each focus group and 4) nformation regarding the pilot of the guides and whether any modifications were made. 4. 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Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests [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 ********** 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 ********** 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: PONE-D-20-30406_reviewer comments Needs major revisions • Overall: This is an important study to show missed opportunities of screening, diagnosing, and treating TB in children admitted for SAM in India. Please see below for specific recommendations for improvement. Additionally, my main suggestion would be to expand the scope of the paper (title, etc) to include not only TB screening, but also TB diagnosis and treatment in your cohort. This is covered in your results nicely, and would make the paper much stronger and comprehensive if it focuses on TB diagnosis and TB treatment initiation (in addition to TB screening). • Cover page: o Please correct the title. It appears that “To, The Editor the full title…” was accidentally copy and pasted. Please only list the full title. o Key words: also include “TB screening” as a key word • Title: o Recommend including the main findings/message in the title as well. How was it a missed opportunity? Let your read know the main findings/message of the TB screening in the Title. • Abstract: o Please fix various typographical and grammar errors in the abstract (e.g. extra words, spaces, unnecessary quotation marks, etc) o In Methods, include the time period of the study (dates of review) o Results: in addition to # screened, please also include # diagnosed with TB, # treated for TB, and # finishing treatment/cured (and # deaths/LTFU) of those 3230 admitted. Also please include results of the gastric aspirates mentioned in the Background (how many had gastric aspirates, how many had positive results….as well as any other TB diagnostic test among those 3230). • Introduction: o Lines 78-79, please make it clearer that the % of reported TB in children was only 6%. As written it is not very clear if that is the intended message. Also, you can delete the “There are enough reasons…” sentence, as your next sentence is sufficient (if you slightly modify it). o Lines 102-104. Other than gastric aspirate, are there any other recommended TB screening for children with SAM? For example, TB screening questions, score chart, CXR, TST/IGRA, etc? Please mention the entire recommended TB screening protocol for children with TB….or if it is only gastric aspirate, please mention that specifically. • Methods o Lines 117-120: when listing numbers, either use a comma for thousands (e.g. 8,465) or remove the space between the thousands and hundreds place (8465). Having a space (“8 465”) makes it more difficult to read. o General settings section: you mention both SMTUs and NRCs…but then your paper only focuses on NRCs? Need more clarification between the two, and why only NRCs examined in the study (what about the SMTUs??) o Line 149: Please clarify the exact dates of 2017 reviewed (e.g. 1st January to 31st December) o Lines 151-153: more details needed on how health care workers were selected for interviews. You need to show your reader that you took steps and precautions to avoid and minimize selection bias and other biases. More details needed to clearly how you ensured “maximum heterogeneity in the responses.” o Data analysis section: the main concern is that your paper’s title focuses on “TB Screening” (which you explained the five steps of doing that in the methods), but then your main output is only microbiologic confirmation. These are two different things….screening vs confirmation of disease. Thus, your main output is not actually a screening output (if screening was done or not in the children). Rather, your main output is microbiological confirmation of TB disease in these children. Very different things. And as you mention in your Introduction, confirmation of TB in young children (especially when SAM) is very difficult and rare. • Results o Qualitative phase section: please include results of all of the screening techniques you mention (i.e. of those screened for XYZ, how many screened positive). Of the Mantoux test, physical exam, suggestive symptoms, CXR, history of contact….we need to know how many screened positive for each of those. � Also, please then list how many of the positive screens (and how many of the children with SAM) were diagnosed with TB, and how many started treatment. o Line 225: unclear what “infective training” refers to. Need more specifics. Lack of confidence on TB symptoms, reading CXR, score charts, Mantoux testing, sputa extraction? Need more details on the gap. o Line 230: is there also reluctance to sputum induction? Or is one method preferred over the other (which is very important information to share!!). which method is accepted more? • Discussion o Lines 282-286. For these five recommendations, can you offer any background or evidence base (citations) that these are effective strategies for your setting? They all seem reasonable, but would strengthen the paper if you can show such interventions have been effective at other settings in India, or globally. o Lines 294-297: you can remove these from discussion. These were already covered in Methods and Results. Focus instead on main messages of the study (main take away points) o Line 300-301: you mention “availability of diagnostic equipment” here…but in results, this was not mentioned and not listed as a challenge from the interviews. Therefore, can not mention it here unless it is referenced above in results. • Figures/Tables o Figures 2 and 3 are excellent, and show the entire TB treatment cascade. I would focus more on highlighting these tables in the text, and focusing on the “leakage” and issues at each step! o Again, your title/paper focuses mostly on TB screening…but you have excellent data along the screening, diagnosis, treatment steps. I would highly recommend you expand the scope of title and paper to include these as well (and not limit it to just screening) o Table 1 � Clarify that “More than 1” actually is only “1-5 years old” � Residence: remove this as 84-99% didn’t have it recorded (thus not useful) • Same for SES of family (if not recorded, not useful to include) � In Table 1, can you also include TB screening (the 5 items) to show how many of the children had each of those 5 screens, and then how many had positive screens of those 5 o Table 2: please also include the % in ( ) after each number. The first three columns are missing the (%) and only list N o Both tables: put your abbreviations footnote below the table (separate) and not as a final row within the table. Reviewer #2: Comments to the Author: Point 1: In the section of Introduction (Page 10, Line 2), the “6.%” was incomplete information. The author should check it and ensure the accuracy of the information. Point 2: In the section of Data collection and sources of data (Page 13, Line 16), the full name of “DMCs” should be given when it first appeared in the text. Point 3: In the section of Result, the format of the number of cases and percentages in Figure 2 should be unified. Besides, some footnotes were inconsistent with the contents in the Figure2 and Figure3. Point 4: Detailed descriptions of tables 1 and 2 cannot be found in the Result section, please check it carefully. Point 5: The formats of the statistical tables were not standard, and the contents of footnotes were inconsistent with the contents of the tables. Point 6: The corresponding percentages were missing after number in Table 2. Point 7: There were too much description of results in the discussion section. The author should refer to other studies for further discussion. Point 8: There were many spelling errors in the manuscript. The author should check and correct it. ********** 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: Yes: WangXueMei [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.
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| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-20-30406R1 Poor adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines among under-five children with severe acute malnutrition in central India: a missed window of opportunity? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dhingra, 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 submit your revised manuscript. 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised 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. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Frederick Quinn Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 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: • Overall: The authors have done an excellent job addressing prior review comments and concerns, and the updated manuscript is much improved with a more comprehensive and cohesive message. There are still multiple minor concerns (listed below) that need addressed, but overall the manuscript is vastly improved. • Cover Page - Abstract: o Please fix various typographical and grammar errors in the abstract (e.g. extra spaces around “( SAM)”), etc, unnecessary quotation marks, etc) o In Results, of the 87 will documented outcomes, please also list of those 87 how many had good outcomes (completed treatment, cured, etc) and how many had poor outcomes (died, LTFU, relapse, etc). • Abstract o As above, please include the favorable/unfavorable outcomes of the 87 with recorded outcomes • Introduction: o Line 71, when mentioning “As per guidelines,…” please specify which guidelines (India national, WHO, India NTP, etc) • Methods o Page 4, line 103: please remove the extra space around “ ; “ typo o Page 5, line 130: Please describe why only Sagar district had qualitative phase (why not also qualitative phase in Sheopur as well?). o Page 6, line 137-138: it is mentioned a mobile-based questionnaire was used in Feb-May 2018….however, this paragraph is describing the quantitative phase. Was a questionnaire and mobile app used during the quantitative phase? Or for the qualitative phase?? Also, the quantitative phase extracted data from 2017…but the mobile-based questionnaire took place in 2018…need to clarify this date discrepancy. o Likewise, for the qualitative (interviews) phase…please list the dates these were conducted in the “Data collection and sources of data” section. • Results o Page 8, line 188: please again list the dates of the study (to help remind your readers) at the start of the first sentence, e.g. “Between 1st Jan and 31st December 2017, a total of 3230 SAM…” o Page 8, paragraph of lines 192-196. Need to use alternate terms other than “positive” when discussing symptoms suggestive of TB and chest xray results. It is not commonly terminology to say “positive” for these two screening techniques. Instead, you can say “202 were found to have symptoms suggestive of TB” and “159 had chest xray results suggestive of pTB” respectively. o Page 8, line 195: please recheck the calculations for the CXR %. 159 is not 1% of 1220 for CXR. Likewise, it is unclear what 485 is 2% of (what is the denominator here?) o Page 8, lines 197-200: interestingly, as written, your yield of CBNAAT (24%) is much lower than your yield of smear (44%). This is the opposite of the commonly accepted data that Xpert has HIGHER yield than smear in children with TB. If correct, you need to discuss why smear performed so much better than CBNAAT in this cohort (which is highly unusual). � Also, please re-word what is meant by “28 children were labeled as clinically confirmed TB.” By WHO definition, “confirmed” means that a sample was found to have MTb (e.g. sputum). Clinically-diagnosis of TB (without “confirmed”) means that a diagnosis of TB was made based on S/Sx, physical exam, CXR, TST, etc…but without confirmation by Xpert/Culture/smear. If you remove “confirmed” here, it will be ok. o Page 8 line 201, please add a descriptor to the “Of 3230,” (e.g. “Of the 3230 diagnosed with TB,…”) o Page 8, line 205-206. Is any information available on the 6% of child with SAM and TB who were not started on ATT? Died? LTFU? Why not started? Also, for the 87 with outcome data, please also include if it was favorable or unfavorable outcome. o Page 8, line 206-208: the total in this line equals 209, but not the 223 of children with TB. o Page 10: Figure 2 is not included (only the title and the footnotes are currently in the clean revisions manuscript). Please include the actual Figure 2. • Discussion o Page 12, line 284, please remove the comma after “Even though,” (not needed) o Page 12, line 286, please add “According to our findings,” before the “Adherence to initial assessment…” sentence (as this is what your findings showed) o Page 13, line 330-331, would suggest removing the “particularly affective and psychomotor domain” portion of sentence, as neither of those was studied or reported in your current study. Better to keep your conclusions focused and linked to your study findings (and not introduce too many new ideas suddenly in the discussion). o Line 332: need a period at the end of the sentence (after references 40-44). o Line 333-334: would rephrase that “when samples were collected, a high proportion were collected via gastric aspirate” since overall, a low percentage of children with SAM had any sample collected; but of the few with samples it was done via gastric aspiration (i.e. preferred method). o Line 335-337: would remove this sentence about transport of specimens, as again, this was not a focus of this study, nor mentioned in Results section, nor was MDR part of this study. o Line 347, change to “this present study documented poor adherence to initial TB screening, assessment, and TB diagnostic guidelines…” o General suggestion: throughout the discussion, the theme of putting blame on the NRC in-charge (i.e. a top-down approach) is prevalent throughout. While it may have been reported during the qualitative interviews, I would caution you and the authors on your persistent focus of putting such blame on the in-charge….since both TB and SAM care for children requires a team approach and teamwork mentality to provide the highest quality of comprehensive care. Each clinician and NRC team member should be empowered with responsibility and motivated to have ownership of their actions and of the care they provide. I worry a bit that the recurrent “blame the in-charge” message could be inappropriately used as a way to absolve other team members of blame and of suboptimal care. I would highly suggest you consider alternative way to re-phrase your findings so that instead of singular blame, the message is to better inspire team work and foster personal responsibility to provide the best care possible (even in challenging work situations with limited resources)…rather than simply blaming and pointing the finger at the in-charge. • Figures/Tables o Figure 1 and Figure 2: the image quality is poor/blurry. Please use a higher definition image (higher quality) that is legible. Also, there is a blue rectangle pixilation in the upper right (typo? Screen shot artifact?) that needs removed. � There is also a superscript “1” in the “Identified by community & others” box that has no definition at the bottom of the figure to show what the “1” refers to � For the % used, please be consistent with your decimal places. Some % have no decimal point (no tenths of a percentage), while others do use a decimal point (and a tenth of percentage). Also, several boxes do not have any (%) listed (e.g. “referred/died”. Please have consistency throughout the figure. Reviewer #2: Comments to the Author: Point 1: In the method section (Page 5, Line 111), the author did not explain how to use the 5 criteria to diagnose tuberculosis. Please check it. Point 2: In the result section, the description of table1 and figure1 was illogical, the author should rearrange the structure of description. Point 3: In the result section (Page 8, Line 192), the description “of them 178 (7%) tested positive” was inconsistent with description of Mantoux test in table 1. The author should correct it. Point 4: The total column of “Time-gap between NRC admission and DOT initiation” in the Table 1 was not necessary. Please check it. Point 5: In the result section (Page 12, Line 278), the full name of “FNAC” should be given when it first appeared in the text. Please check it carefully. Point 6: In the footnotes of figures, we could not find “AFP” and “SSM” in the figure 1 and figure 2. The author should check it carefully. ********** 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 [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.
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| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-20-30406R2 Poor adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines among under-five children with severe acute malnutrition in central India: a missed window of opportunity? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dhingra, 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 submit your revised manuscript. If you will need significantly more time 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised 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. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Frederick Quinn Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 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: Partly 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: • Overall: The authors have done a good job addressing certain comments. However, there are still issues and gaps that need addressed to make the manuscript stronger and flow more logically and coherently. There are also some data discrepancies between results and discussion that need addressed. • Abstract o In Background, you specifically mention “presumptive pediatric pulmonary TB patients” however the title and rest of the abstract simply uses “TB” (without the ‘pulmonary’ preface). Throughout your study, are you only reviewing/reporting on pulmonary TB? Or does your data include all types of child TB (pTB and EPTB)? Whatever the case, either remove “pulmonary” here, or add “pulmonary” throughout so it is clear and harmonized in the paper (“pTB” vs “TB”). o In Objective, remove “(2017)” and instead change to “in 2017.” o Methods, remove the “Between February and May 2018”, as it is not critical to report when the analysis was done. Rather, it is much more important to know the dates of retrospective review (Jan-Dec 2017). Writing when the study teamed reviewed the 2017 data is unnecessary (and could add to some date confusion of the reader). Instead, you can start the Methods with “An explanatory mixed methods study was conducted to analyze the 2017 child TB data among under-fives with SAM at NRCs in Sagar and Sheopur districts. The NRC records were reviewed,….” o Methods, your definition of “adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines” as listed in the abstract is very narrow (i.e. it only focuses on specimen collection). TB diagnostic guidelines also involve clinical history suggestive of TB, physical exam findings suggestive of TB, lack of response to other non-TB treatments, and other non-sputum/molecular tests (e.g. radiography/CXR, IGRA, etc). When assessing “adherence to TB diagnostic guidelines” (yes/no), did you team evaluate all of these diagnostic pathways? Or just whether a specimen for AFB smear and/or Xpert was obtained? If the former, please clarify this in the abstract. o Results, in your abstract, you provide no results for the “Operationally, adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines” (yes/no) that was mentioned in your Methods. Please lists the data on what %/N were “yes” for adhered to guidelines. Your results only mention TB screening and gastric aspirates….which are a part/subset of “TB diagnostic guidelines” but are not comprehensive to TB diagnosis. o In Results, “poor team skills” as written is unclear and not a commonly used term. I know this is in response to an earlier comment, but needs rephased/rewritten so that it is easily understandable to your audience what you are trying to convey as a challenge. Telling someone “poor team skills” is a challenge is hard to interpret what exactly you mean. o Conclusion: needs rephrased. The single sentence as written is difficult to understand. For example, you write “its utilization remains suboptimal” yet the subject of the sentence is NRCs….thus, is NRC utilization suboptimal? Or do you mean that following TB screening and diagnostic guidelines within the NRCs are suboptimal? This conclusion in the abstract needs rewritten to better summarize the findings of your study. • Introduction: o Line 63: here you mention the high rates of EPTB in child TB; to my earlier comment above…is your study only looking at pTB or all types of TB? If only pTB, it seems odd to mention the higher rates of EPTB in children…but then not to analyze EPTB in your cohort. Line 82 specifically mentioned “pediatric pulmonary TB” again. What about children with EPTB? You need to make it abundantly clear if you are only assessing pTB or all types TB in your cohort of under-fives with SAM. o Line 76 and line 80. Add appropriate spaces after the period (before “In”). o Lines 83-85. Please add in a sentence or details linking the gaps in India’s NRCs to what you aimed to do with your study. E.g. “In order to try and better address and understand the reason for these large TB treatment gaps in children with SAM, our study aimed to estimate the yield…” Otherwise, the final two sentences do not flow well from the rest of your Introduction. • Methods o Line 139, please delete “between Feb and May 2018” as it is not necessary to report when your study team did their data extraction/analysis. What is important is to share the dates the data was extracted from (2017), which you have already done. The 2018 dates could add to date confusion for the audience. • Results o Line 196, add a space after “(6%)” o Line 212-213: there are 209 who started TB treatment, but you only have 70 with favorable and 121 not recorded…which is 191 total. What about the other 18 patients (of the 209)?? Your outcomes (since they include “not recorded” should tally the 209 who started ATT o Again, I am having trouble on how you are defining “Screened for TB” in your Table 2. It says only 17% screened for TB in this table. But in your text above, it mentions 83% had Mantoux text, 70% were asked about symptoms of TB….and both of these are ways to screen for TB. From your text, it looks like upwards of 70-83% were screened for TB (in one way or another), but your table says only 17%? This is confusing to the reader and needs clarified and addressed. I think your table means to show who had smear or Xpert…which is different from “Screened as per guidelines”, I would recommend removing “screened as per guidelines” and instead write “Underwent smear microscopy or rapid molecular test” o Line 261 and section: again, consider different terminology. “poor team skills” is not commonly used, and vague and hard to understand as written. Lack of motivation, lack of ownership, or work avoidance seem better terms to use what I think you are trying to describe. o Line 273: I don’t think “ambiguity” is the correct term for the challenge here. As written, it sounds like the way the Indian TB guidelines are written is not clear and ambiguous. Is that the issue? Guidelines are not clearly written? Or is it again a type of “work avoidance” where team members don’t want to have the responsibility of diagnosis and treating TB in children? o Line 279: “Non-availability” or “Unavailable” would be more appropriate terms to use here instead of “Non-feasibility” • Discussion o Line 285-286: as mentioned above in Abstract, this first sentence needs rewritten for clarification and ease of understanding. It makes it sound like NRC utilization is suboptimal as written. o Line 287: change “coverage” to “implementation” � Also, I still struggle to understand how your smear yield is so much better and so much higher than your Xpert/CBNAAT yield. The added text doesn’t help explain this. Can you elaborate more on why this mis-matched performance of AFB smear vs Xpert in your cohort? o Line 288: were diagnostic guidelines different? Or do you mean they way they were implemented (or lack of implementation at sites) is what differed? I think you may want to change “followed” to “implemented” o Line 300: here you say less than one-third…but in your results (line 198 ) you say 2277/70% were asked about symptoms suggestive of TB. This wide data discrepancy needs to addressed and aligned. o Line 309-310: again, you say one-third had CXR and Mantoux test…but in your results (line 196), there were 2665/83% with Mantoux testing. Again, your Results and your Discussion need to align and harmonize. o Line 310-311: recommend changing “availability” to “usage” or “implementation” as the availability or stock out of such test are not related to teamwork or motivation (but usage is) o In your Discussion, many paragraphs talk about the quantitative findings (and interpreting them). But there really aren’t any paragraphs in your discussion that talk about and interpret the various qualitative (interview) findings of your study that you present in your results. Before jumping into your “The following are our recommendations” paragraph, it would be good to discuss and interpret the findings of your qualitative phases (the interviews) in your Discussion. Doing this would also make “your recommendations” flow more naturally and be derived from the findings in your Results. Likewise, in line 336 you mention how the qualitative phase was “invaluable in complementing”; yet the qualitative findings receive little to no attention in your discussion o Line 336: add a spacing before this new paragraph. o • Figures/Tables o Figure 1 and Figure 2: the image quality is still very poor/blurry in the built pdf. It is difficult to read due to blurriness, and needs a higher quality image that is legible. Reviewer #2: Comments to the Author: Point 1: In the result section, the first paragraph described the contents of table 2, not Table 1. Please check it carefully. Point 2: The contents of table 2 was more suitable described firstly in the Quantitative phase, the author should set table 2 to table 1. Point 3: In the Quantitative phase section, the description of tables and figures is illogical. The author should describe them as following figuere1, table2 and table1. Point 4: We still could not find “AFP” and “SSM” in the footnote of figure 1. Please check it carefully. Point 5: The image of figure1 and figure2 was blurry. Please use a higher definition image. ********** 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. 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| Revision 3 |
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Poor adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines among under-five children with severe acute malnutrition in central India: a missed window of opportunity? PONE-D-20-30406R3 Dear Dr. Dhingra, 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, Frederick Quinn 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 ********** 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: Partly 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: Please do a throughough final review to correct the few remaining typos and grammar issues in the manuscript (e.g. consistent spacing before parantheses, periods at end of sentences, etc). Reviewer #2: After revising, the author had done an excellent job addressing prior review comments and concerns. The author had rearranged the description of tables and figures. Besides, the author had added the quantitative findings in the discussion section. Author also unified the description of the screening criteria, which made manuscript more scientific. Therefore, I recommend this manuscript to be accepted. ********** 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 |
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PONE-D-20-30406R3 Poor adherence to TB diagnosis guidelines among under-five children with severe acute malnutrition in central India: a missed window of opportunity? Dear Dr. Dhingra: 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. Frederick Quinn Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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