Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 26, 2022
Decision Letter - Wen-Wei Sung, Editor

PONE-D-22-12315Intraoperative calculus or hemorrhage in transurethral seminal vesiculoscopy as a risk factor for recurrent hemospermiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chuan-Shu Chen,

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.

Both reviewers provided constructive suggestions and revision was concluded. Please revise the MS accordingly or discuss the issue that might not be addressed. Please submit your revised manuscript by June 30, 2022. 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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Wen-Wei Sung, M.D., Ph.D.

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: Yes

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: This manuscript is well organized, and the topic has good merit to discuss. However, some issues may need to be revised before publication.

1) Minor structural or grammatical errors need to be taken into account, e.g., “Transrectal Ultrasound (TRUS), Computed Tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)” in line 29 should use small letters instead of capital letters. Also, an inconsistent style has been used to present the number of patients, e.g., “Forty-eight (48) patients” in line 74 versus “22 non-recurrent patients” in line 77.

2) The citations at the end of the sentence should always be put before the full stop, e.g., Hemospermia, hematospermia, or haematospermia is defined as blood appearance in the 26 semen [1].

3) Residual confounders such as lifestyle and the influence of comedications were not considered in the current study, which should be addressed in the limitations section.

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting manuscript and providing imporatnt information. Ths following are some comments.

1. Recurrent hematospermia is an important problem in clinical practice. The authors include patients with persistent hemospermia and intractable hemospermia, with symptoms persisting over 3 months regardless of medical treatment. Is there any guideline or consensus define the definition of intractable hemospermia.

2. The succussful rate of transurethral seminal vesiculoscopy is very high in this study. Are all patients received complete TUSV? Is there any patient have receive only one side succussful TUSV

3. Intraoperative manifestations, such as Calculus, hemorrhage, mucosal lesion, were recorded. Please provide how many patient have mucosal lesion and the biopsy result.

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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.

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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

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Revision 1

REVIEWER 1 COMMENTS:

1. Minor structural or grammatical errors need to be taken into account, e.g., “Transrectal Ultrasound (TRUS), Computed Tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)” in line 29 should use small letters instead of capital letters. Also, an inconsistent style has been used to present the number of patients, e.g., “Forty-eight (48) patients” in line 74 versus “22 non-recurrent patients” in line 77.

• Thank you for your suggestions. We have corrected our manuscript as per your comments.

2. The citations at the end of the sentence should always be put before the full stop, e.g., Hemospermia, hematospermia, or haematospermia is defined as blood appearance in the 26 semen [1].

• Thank you for your suggestion. We have corrected our manuscript as per your comments.

3. Residual confounders such as lifestyle and the influence of comedications were not considered in the current study, which should be addressed in the limitations section.

• You have raised an important issue. We have rewritten the Limitations and future prospects section of the paper (p. 13-14, lines 192-195) to be more in line with your comments.

REVIEWER 2 COMMENTS:

1. Recurrent hematospermia is an important problem in clinical practice. The authors include patients with persistent hemospermia and intractable hemospermia, with symptoms persisting over 3 months regardless of medical treatment. Is there any guideline or consensus define the definition of intractable hemospermia.

• You have raised an important question. We have rewritten the Introduction (p. 3, lines 32-36) to be more in line with your comments.

2. The succussful rate of transurethral seminal vesiculoscopy is very high in this study. Are all patients received complete TUSV? Is there any patient have receive only one side succussful TUSV

• You have raised two important questions. We have rewritten the Success rate section found under the Discussion heading (p. 12-13, lines 171-178) to be more in line with your comments.

3. Intraoperative manifestations, such as Calculus, hemorrhage, mucosal lesion, were recorded. Please provide how many patient have mucosal lesion and the biopsy result.

• Thank you for your suggestion. We have added the result in Table 2(p. 8) and in the Intraoperative findings section (p. 8, lines 95-98). Raw data was added in S1 File.

ETHICS STATEMENT

1. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information.

If you are reporting a retrospective study of medical records or archived samples, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them and/or whether the IRB or ethics committee waived the requirement for informed consent. If patients provided informed written consent to have data from their medical records used in research, please include this information

• Thank you for your suggestion. We have rewritten the Patients section found under the Materials and Methods heading (p. 4, lines 55-56) to be more in line with your comment.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Wen-Wei Sung, Editor

Intraoperative calculus or hemorrhage in transurethral seminal vesiculoscopy as a risk factor for recurrent hemospermia

PONE-D-22-12315R1

Dear Dr. Chuan-Shu Chen,

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,

Wen-Wei Sung, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: (No Response)

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The authors could answer all questions. No more comments. The manuscript could be accepted and provided important information.

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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: No

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Wen-Wei Sung, Editor

PONE-D-22-12315R1

Intraoperative calculus or hemorrhage in transurethral seminal vesiculoscopy as a risk factor for recurrent hemospermia

Dear Dr. Chen:

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. Wen-Wei Sung

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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