Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 8, 2022
Decision Letter - Diego García-Ayuso, Editor

PONE-D-22-03935Demographic profiles of contact lens wearers and their association with lens wear characteristics in Trinidad and Tobago: A retrospective studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Osuagwu,

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.

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Diego García-Ayuso, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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: In this manuscript, the authors studied the demographic profiles of contact lenses wearers and their associations whit purpose of wear, CLs materials, replacement schedule, and modality of wear in Trinidad y Tobago

The results are interesting, but some important things need to be addressed in methodology and text redaction.

In my opinion the biggest limitation is that since the data was collected only from one clinic the authors could not make a valid inference from their sample for the whole Trinidad y Tobago population.

Line 145: The authors should define the meaning of the different purpose of wear, particularly fashion and therapeutic/cosmesis.

Table 1 and Line 171. Cosmesis is not report in the table 1. The authors should always use the same terminology to make the reading of the work simpler and avoid confusing the reader.

Line 176-177:

“Most (61%) record cards did not reflect the type of lens system used.” Insert lens care system.

“…used multipurpose solution and 14% used Boston solution”. The authors should define which type of lens care is “Boston solution” because Boston solution is a brand of Bausch and Lomb company which includes many different types of solutions.

The authors should include the company data in the manuscript

Minor issue:

Lines 92 and 95: Trinidad y Tobago had been previously defined, authors should use the abbreviations

Reviewer #2: our study provided baseline data on the demographical profile of

269 CL in T&T and could be used for comparison across the Caribbean in future studies.

As stated in the methods section the study is a retrospective study that reviewed Cl wearers clinical records of 243 CL wearers attending a university clinic. However, in the abstract authors should not refer to the record as “About half of the respondents wear” . as there is now acquired responses from the wearers. (lines 40-41)

Lines 140-141

Exclusion criteria, why to exclude contact lens prescribed outside UWI optometry clinic. As the aim of the study is to study characteristic of contact lenses in the population rather than single clinic?

The author mentioned a brand of boston solution, can more details add is it RGP solution? ANY OTHER DETAILS.

Table 1 for better readability and comparison to include number of participants and percentage in one column n (%)

Table 2 contact lens type the sum of percentages does not give a total of 100%

The discussion could include more elaboration on the نثغ findings mentioned in the result section,

Age, gender and employment status

Line 263 “questionnaire-based studies”, the study is retrospective no mention of any questionnaire or patients interview

Conclusion: respondent word should not be used in the study as it is retrospective based

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: May M Bakkar

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Revision 1

Response to reviewers’ comments

Thank you for the very useful comments. We have revised the manuscript according to the constructive comments made by the reviewers. Please find below a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments.

Reviewer 1

1. Reviewers’ comment

Line 145: The authors should define the meaning of the different purpose of wear, particularly fashion and therapeutic/cosmesis.

Response

Done. The meanings of fashion and therapeutic/cosmesis have been defined in the manuscript (line 144 to 147).

2. Reviewers’ comment

Table 1 and Line 171. Cosmesis is not report in the table 1. The authors should always use the same terminology to make the reading of the work simpler and avoid confusing the reader.

Response

Cosmesis and fashion are basically the same thing in this contest. To avoid confusion, we have used fashion as it best represents the responses. This has been corrected in the table and the entire manuscript as suggested.

3. Reviewers’ comment

Line 176-177:

“Most (61%) record cards did not reflect the type of lens system used.” Insert lens care system.

Response

Lens care system has been inserted as suggested (line 179)

4. Reviewers’ comments

The authors should define which type of lens care is “Boston solution” because Boston solution is a brand of Bausch and Lomb Company which includes many different types of solutions.

The authors should include the company data in the manuscript

Response The type of Boston solution used has been defined in the manuscript (line 181 to 182). It now reads:

‘Most (61%) record cards did not reflect the type of lens care system used. About one-quarter (24.3%) used multipurpose solution [e.gs include Bausch and Lomb Renu advance formula, Renu fresh, Renu sensitive and Biotrue multipurpose solutions used for soft CLs] and 14% used Boston solution by Boston Advance® care system (Bausch & Lomb, Rochester, New York)’. See also footnote in Table 1

5. Reviewers’ comment

Lines 92 and 95: Trinidad y Tobago had been previously defined; authors should use the abbreviations.

Response

Trinidad and Tobago have been changed to T & T in the entire manuscript as suggested

Reviewers’ #2

6. Reviewers’ comment: As stated in the methods section the study is a retrospective study that reviewed Cl wearers’ clinical records of 243 CL wearers attending a university clinic. However, in the abstract authors should not refer to the record as “About half of the respondents wear”. as there is now acquired responses from the wearers. (lines 40-41).

Response

The statement has been corrected to read’’ About half of the CL wearers used them for fashion (more among those aged 18 to 30 years, 61.0%), therapeutic (more among those <18 years, 43.8%, P = 0.001) and refractive error correction purposes (more in those >40 years, P =0.001)’’ (line 45 to 47)

We have also replaced “respondents” with “CL wearers” in the manuscript as suggested.

7. Reviewers’ comment

Lines 140-141

Exclusion criteria, why to exclude contact lens prescribed outside UWI optometry clinic. As the aim of the study is to study characteristic of contact lenses in the population rather than single clinic.

Response

This was a retrospective study involving records of patients that attended the UWI optometry clinic. For this reason, those who CLs were not prescribed at the UWI clinic were excluded because the information regarding their CLs and other variables needed in this study cannot be verified.

8. Reviewers’ comment

The author mentioned a brand of Boston solution, can more details add is it RGP solution? ANY OTHER DETAILS.

Response

More details about the type of Boston lens care solution used have been added. The section now reads:

“Boston solution by Boston Advance® care system (Bausch & Lomb, Rochester, New York) (line 180 to 181)”. See also footnote in Table 1

9. Reviewers’ comment

Table 1 for better readability and comparison to include number of participants and percentage in one column n (%).

Response

The number of participants and percentage have been put in one column as suggested (see Table 1) and footnote added.

10. Reviewers’ comment

Table 1 CL type the sum of percentages does not give a total of 100%

Response

The percentage has been corrected.

11. Reviewers’ comment

The discussion could include more elaboration on the findings mentioned in the result section,

Age, gender, and employment status

Response

The discussion has been elaborated to include age, gender, and employment status in the manuscript (line 240 to 271).

12. Reviewers’ comment

Line 263 “questionnaire-based studies”, the study is retrospective no mention of any questionnaire or patients’ interview.

Response

Retrospective studies include review of patient record as well and does not always have to be surveys or interviews. This has been reflected more across the manuscript. Some of the relevant sections were:

“This was a retrospective review of data from patients prescribed with CL” (Line 134)

And

This retrospective study investigated the characteristics of CL wearers and their association with lens characteristics using data (line 234 to 235).

13. Reviewers’ comment

Conclusion: respondent word should not be used in the study as it is retrospective based

Response

We have replaced “respondents” with “CL wearers” in the manuscript as suggested and have also rephrased the conclusion.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Rubbal letter.docx
Decision Letter - Diego García-Ayuso, Editor

Demographic profiles of contact lens wearers and their association with lens wear characteristics in Trinidad and Tobago: A retrospective study

PONE-D-22-03935R1

Dear Dr. Osuagwu,

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,

Diego García-Ayuso, PhD

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: The changes made by the authors have improved the manuscript, especially in the sections on methodology, discussion and Limitations and strengths.

Reviewer #2: Thanks for considering all comments. The authors gave satisfying revision and addressed all the comments.

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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: Yes: May M Bakkar

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Diego García-Ayuso, Editor

PONE-D-22-03935R1

Demographic profiles of contact lens wearers and their association with lens wear characteristics in Trinidad and Tobago: A retrospective study

Dear Dr. Osuagwu:

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. Diego García-Ayuso

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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