PONE-D-22-00911Risk of Peripheral Artery Occlusive Disease in Patients with Lower Leg Fracture Who Received Fixation and Non-fixation Treatments: A Population Cohort StudyPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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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: I think it is a very significant paper to improve the quality of trauma care for functional and long-term prognosis. Please correct the following two points.

Major revision

Soft tissue damage and fixation period are thought to influence vessel patency, but if this is the case, it would be better to analyze the fixation methods separately for internal and external fixation. Also, what was the proportion of minimally invasive plate osteosynthesis among the internal fixations? It would be good to at least mention that in the limitation.

Minor revision

In the preface to “Results”, the numerical notation is separated by every three digits, but not thereafter. Please unify either.

Reviewer #2: Comments to authors:

1.

In Table 1, the authors need to include more history of diseases or coexisting medical conditions, such as hyperlipidemia, mental disorders, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, COPD, liver cirrhosis, and renal dialysis. In addition, the use of medical care service also should be considered in this study.

2.

In Table 1, the age should be divided as 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, >=80.

3.

The immortal time bias is very important to this study and the authors need to consider this point in the study design and statistical analysis.

4.

The IRB number seems very old. The authors need to provide the real ethical approval from the Intuitional Review Board.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Risk of Peripheral Artery Occlusive Disease in Patients with Lower Leg Fracture Who Received Fixation and Non-fixation Treatments: A Population Cohort Study

PONE-D-22-00911R1

Dear Dr. Wu,

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.

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Kind regards,

Rudolf Kirchmair

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

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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

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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

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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: Yes

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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: You have responded and replied appropriately to my review comment. I wish you luck in further developing your series study by collecting data on risk factors, severity of disease, and impact of treatment and other factors.

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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

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