Validation of a Polish version of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale: Do moderate psychometric properties affect its clinical utility?

Adam Wiśniewski; Karolina Filipska; Marlena Puchowska; Katarzyna Piec; Filip Jaskólski; Robert Ślusarz

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0249211

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 9, 2021
10 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Miguel A. Barboza, Editor PONE-D-21-00869 Validation of a Polish version of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale- can moderate psychometric properties affect its clinical utility? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wiśniewski, 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. The manuscript seems interesting, but I encourage the authors to seek for English Editing Services to correct grammatical errors through out the manuscript. Also, the quality of the images is low, and make them difficult to evaluate, please refer to PLOS ONE guidelines for images quality. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 21 2021 11:59PM. 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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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: The paper is interesting, well written and valuable. Results sound not too optimistic not too pessimistic, so PL-NIHSS may be used until new version of the scale will be prepared. It is first time done for Polish version. I have one important comment. Authors are at day of admission, beside routine patients’ characteristic and PL- NIHSS are also doing mRS, Barthel and GCS. Writing in page 4, in methods. „which are most widely accepted tools for this purpose” not giving references. GCS may be done, but mRS and Barthel cannot be performed in most cases and is unreliable. At admission we ask patient or family and notice – pre stroke functional status. I propose to delate these scales from admission characteristic, GCS can stay (not necessary), as well from results and figures. Is Ok to do mRS and Barthel after 90 days, but authors do not mention it in the methods, but we see in results. ****** 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 [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249211.r001
Revision 1
19 Feb 2021 Author Response Response to Reviewers comments Academic Editor: The manuscript seems interesting, but I encourage the authors to seek for English Editing Services to correct grammatical errors through out the manuscript. Also, the quality of the images is low, and make them difficult to evaluate, please refer to PLOS ONE guidelines for images quality. Response: Dear Editor, Thank You for this comment. According to the Editor recommendation our manuscript underwent the extensive language, style, grammar and typographical corrections made by Editage- Professional English Editing Service. We have also improved the quality and resolution of the Figures and checked them with PACE tool to ensure that they meet PLOS requirements. We also provided the changes suggested by the Reviewer, regarding stroke assessment at admission. Reviewer: The paper is interesting, well written and valuable. Results sound not too optimistic not too pessimistic, so PL-NIHSS may be used until new version of the scale will be prepared. It is first time done for Polish version. I have one important comment. Authors are at day of admission, beside routine patients’ characteristic and PL- NIHSS are also doing mRS, Barthel and GCS. Writing in page 4, in methods. „which are most widely accepted tools for this purpose” not giving references. GCS may be done, but mRS and Barthel cannot be performed in most cases and is unreliable. At admission we ask patient or family and notice – pre stroke functional status. I propose to delate these scales from admission characteristic, GCS can stay (not necessary), as well from results and figures. Is Ok to do mRS and Barthel after 90 days, but authors do not mention it in the methods, but we see in results. Response: Thank You for positive opinion regarding our paper. As suggested by the Reviewer we have removed Barthel Index and modified Rankin Scale from admission characteristics, both in the Methodology Section, as well as in the Results Section and Figures. At this moment there are only PL-NIHSS and Glasgow Coma Scale as stroke assessment at admission. The stroke evaluation after 90 days is described in Methodology Section- Lines- 84-87. I would like to thank You for the careful review of our study and the constructive comments that have been used to organize all issues and improve the work. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249211.r002
15 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Miguel A. Barboza, Editor Validation of a Polish version of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale: Do moderate psychometric properties affect its clinical utility? PONE-D-21-00869R1 Dear Dr. Wiśniewski, 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, Miguel A. Barboza, MD, MSc 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: I have no furthers comments. Thank you for your response. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249211.r003
Formally Accepted
25 Mar 2021 Acceptance Letter - Miguel A. Barboza, Editor PONE-D-21-00869R1 Validation of a Polish version of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale: Do moderate psychometric properties affect its clinical utility? Dear Dr. Wiśniewski: 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. Miguel A. Barboza Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249211.r004

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