Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Chenyang Zhang; Guosheng Yin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275888

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 7, 2021
21 Jun 2022 Decision Letter - Natasha McDonald, Editor Transfer Alert This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present. PONE-D-21-22189 Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Yin, 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 reviewers raised a number of concerns with your manuscript, including the methodological approach and the rationale for the study in the context of existing work, and the presentation of your data. The reviewers' comments can be viewed in full, below. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 08 2022 11:59PM. 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Natasha McDonald, PhD Associate 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 3. Please upload a new copy of Figure S1 as the detail is not clear. Please follow the link for more information: https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/06/looking-good-tips-for-creating-your-plos-figures-graphics/" https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/06/looking-good-tips-for-creating-your-plos-figures-graphics/ 4. 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. [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: I would like to congratulate authors on this important manuscript. It well written manuscript with crucial implications in PAD. I agree with the findings as paclitaxel coated has no impact on patient mortality. However to further strengthen the manuscript I would recommend following. 1. Please provide the location data on each study including countries where patients were enrolled. 2. Please provide the data on patient demographic and clinical characteristics if available. 3. As prior meta analysis has shown similar results, should include in more detail the novelty of this study ( mathlouthi et al journal of vascular surgery feb 2021, P Schneider et al May 2109 JACC) 4. Please include more limitations of the study. Reviewer #2: The artile is technically good, but I'm affraid that the results are expect after the publication of the SWEDPAD study. Therefore, as it is written, the study adds little to the current evidence. However, it could be improved if the authors organized the way they present the results. This study is not novel but it can help to understand what change in the risk estimation between 2018 (Katsanos) and 2022. Therefore, I suggest the authors that properly identify in their forest plots the new studies which have been published after 2018 so we identify them and understand their impact in the analysis. As you recognized in the discussion, being this an update of Katsanos, readers need to easily understand the differences between the works. I saw you assessed the methodological quality of the studies using RoB 2 but you did not mention the results of the analysis in the results section. I suggest you do it. "This systematic review and summary-level meta-analysis showed that the use of paclitaxel DCBs and DESs was not associated with increased short- or long-term mortality. However, at two and five years, we still observed a higher risk of death for patients receiving paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices and the meta-analysis yielded marginal results yet reaching statistical significance." I dont agree with this conclusion. You demonstrated that no increased risk was found. You have wrote a discussion based on the absence of a statistically significant risk of death. But you contradict yourself regarding the risk of death in the conclusion section. I think this is not in line with your findings. so I suggest you to simplify the conclusion section based on your actual findings. ****** 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: Yes:** Sawan Jalnapurkar 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275888.r001
Revision 1
17 Jul 2022 Author Response Responses to Comments from Reviewer 1 on Manuscript PONE-D-21-22189 We thank you for your careful review of our manuscript and many insightful comments. We have updated this meta-analysis and revised our manuscript by taking into account all of your comments, which led to a much better exposition of our work. Our point-by-point responses to major comments are given below, with your original comments copied in Italics for your convenience. Comments: 1. Please provide the location data on each study including countries where patients were enrolled. Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We have added the locations of the included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the revised Table 1. 2. Please provide the data on patient demographic and clinical characteristics if available. Response: Thank you for this comment. We have added data on patient baseline demographic and angiographic characteristics of the included RCTs in S2 and S3 Tables (Supporting Information) 3. As prior meta analysis has shown similar results, should include in more detail the novelty of this study ( mathlouthi et al journal of vascular surgery feb 2021, P Schneider et al May 2109 JACC) Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. We added discussions on the comparisons between our meta-analysis and previous studies in the revised manuscript. The added text is quoted below. Compared with previous meta-analyses, our study included more recently published RCTs after 2020 and we can further investigate the trend of the increased risk of death due to paclitaxel over the publication time. …… Klumb et al. conducted a meta-analysis which included studies before February 2019 to evaluate the influence of paclitaxel-coated balloon angioplasty for patients with FPA diseases and they found no evidence on the increased risk of two-year all-cause mortality after DCB. Based on individual patient-level data from two single-arm trials and two RCTs, Schneider et al.demonstrated the safety of the use of paclitaxel-coated balloons to treat FPA diseases. An updated meta-analysis conducted by Dinh et al. identified 34 RCTs before December 2020 and reported no association between the increased risk of all-cause mortality and the implementation of paclitaxel devices. Mathlouthi et al. performed a retrospective study on patients receiving paclitaxel-eluting stents and claimed no difference in the 2-year all-cause mortality in the real-world setting. Nevertheless, they observed a significantly higher risk of death among patients who required longer stents and higher paclitaxel doses. 4. Please include more limitations of the study. Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We discussed more limitations of our study in the Discussion section as follows. In the cumulative meta-analysis by years of publications, we observed a decreasing trend of RR for the two- and five-year all-cause mortality, indicating that paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices implemented in recent years were less toxic to patients with PAD. The improvement of products using paclitaxel might make substantial contributions to the treatment of lesions in the femoropopliteal arteries. However, in this study we did not consider this issue since there were few studies investigating the efficacy and safety of a specific paclitaxel device and the corresponding subgroup analysis could not provide convincing evidence. We focused on the use of paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices in FPA and excluded RCTs for infrapopliteal artery diseases. The safety of paclitaxel exposure in below-the-knee arteries is also a controversial topic and several meta-analyses have been conducted. Another limitation of our study is that we only considered a single safety endpoint of all-cause mortality and did not examine the association between the use of paclitaxel and other safety issues, e.g., thrombosis, allergy and major amputation of the target limb. Responses to Comments from Reviewer 2 on Manuscript PONE-D-21-22189 We thank you for your careful review of our manuscript and many insightful comments. We have updated this meta-analysis and revised our manuscript by taking into account all of your comments, which led to a much better exposition of our work. Our point-by-point responses to major comments are given below, with your original comments copied in Italics for your convenience. Comments: 1. The article is technically good, but I'm afraid that the results are expect after the publication of the SWEDPAD study. Therefore, as it is written, the study adds little to the current evidence. Response: Thanks for your comment. The SWEDEPAD trial enrolled 2289 patients and made an impactful contribution to the meta-analysis due to its large sample size. We agree that after the completion of the SWEDEPAD trial, the results of our meta-analysis might change. However, given the interim analysis of the SWEDEPAD trial, researches claimed that the results ‘did not show a difference between the groups in the incidence of death during 1 to 4 years of follow-up’, which is consistent with our conclusions. Given such an important controversial issue, our study gives a more comprehensive update of meta-analysis based on cumulative evidence. For this revision, ten new studies were added to our meta-analysis. 2. This study is not novel but it can help to understand what change in the risk estimation between 2018 (Katsanos) and 2022. Therefore, I suggest the authors that properly identify in their forest plots the new studies which have been published after 2018 so we identify them and understand their impact in the analysis. As you recognized in the discussion, being this an update of Katsanos, readers need to easily understand the differences between the works. Response: Thanks for your suggestion. In Figs 2-4, we split all eligible RCTs into two subgroups: studies in Katsanos et al. and newly added studies. The revised forest plots show that for the 2-year all-cause mortality, studies in Katasanos et al. reported an RR of 1.64 (95% CI [1.12, 2.40]) while the newly added studies have an RR of 1.00 (95% CI [0.86; 1.17]), which delivers contradicted results. For the 5-year all-cause mortality , three studies in Katasanos et al. identified significantly increased risk of death due to the use of paclitaxel (RR=1.59, 95% CI [1.11, 2.29]]) while the five newly added studies demonstrated no association between the use of paclitaxel and increased risk of death (RR=1.01, 95% CI [0.75, 1.37]). 3. I saw you assessed the methodological quality of the studies using RoB 2 but you did not mention the results of the analysis in the results section. I suggest you do it. Response: Thank you for this comment. We have added discussion on the evaluation of risk of bias as follows. All the included 39 RCTs were judged to be of high overall risk of bias and the main source of risk arose from the bias due to deviations from intended interventions. There exists noticeable visual difference between paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices and standard uncoated devices. Therefore, investigators were usually not blinded to treatment assignment, which might affect the clinical decision making during the follow-up period. Detailed risk of bias assessment for each included RCT is presented in S1 Fig. 4. "This systematic review and summary-level meta-analysis showed that the use of paclitaxel DCBs and DESs was not associated with increased short- or long-term mortality. However, at two and five years, we still observed a higher risk of death for patients receiving paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices and the meta-analysis yielded marginal results yet reaching statistical significance." I dont agree with this conclusion. You demonstrated that no increased risk was found. You have wrote a discussion based on the absence of a statistically significant risk of death. But you contradict yourself regarding the risk of death in the conclusion section. I think this is not in line with your findings. so I suggest you to simplify the conclusion section based on your actual findings. Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. We have revised this part in the revised manuscript as follows. However, at two and five years, we observed a potential tendency yet reaching statistical significance towards increased risk of death for patients receiving paclitaxel-coated/eluting devices. Concerning well-proven clinical effectiveness of paclitaxel devices in the femoropopliteal arteries, further investigations including more RCTs with longer follow-up periods and individual patient-level data are warranted to shed more light on the risk-benefit profiles of paclitaxel usage in PAD patients. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275888.r002
2 Sep 2022 Decision Letter - Salvatore De Rosa, Editor PONE-D-21-22189R1Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Yin, 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 by Oct 17 2022 11:59PM. 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Salvatore De Rosa Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: In particular, carefully revise the tone of the discussion to accomodate the recommendations by Reviewer #3. [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: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) ******** 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 #3: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #3: I Don't Know ****** 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: I read with interest the manuscript # PONE-D-21-22189R1 by Dr Chenyang Zhang and Guosheng Yin entitled “Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysis”. This is a systematic review and meta-analysis including 9164 patients from 39 RCTs evaluating the safety of paclitaxel-coated devices for the percutaneous treatment of femoro-popliteal atherosclerotic lesions. The results indicate no difference in short-term all-cause deaths between the paclitaxel and control groups, but showing a potential tendency towards increased risk of death at two and five years. The manuscript is well written and the topic is of interest although a growing body of evidence has been accumulated in the last few years. The manuscript went through a first revision process and authors appropriately replied to the majority of the queries. I suggest to re-consider the sentences were a trend towards increased risk of death is highlighted, since this is not strongly supported by the findings, especially when looking at more recently published RCTs (after 2020). ****** 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: Yes: Sawan Jalnapurkar Reviewer #3: 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.0275888.r003
Revision 2
5 Sep 2022 Author Response We thank you for your careful review of our manuscript and many insightful comments. We have revised our manuscript by considering all of your comments, which led to a much better exposition of our work. Our point-by-point responses to major comments are given below, with your original comments copied in Italics for your convenience. Comments: To Editor: 1. In particular, carefully revise the tone of the discussion to accommodate the recommendations by Reviewer #3. Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the mentioned sentences in the Abstract and Discussion sections following the recommendations by Reviewer #3. To Reviewer #3 1. I suggest to re-consider the sentences were a trend towards increased risk of death is highlighted, since this is not strongly supported by the findings, especially when looking at more recently published RCTs (after 2020). Response: Thank you for pointing out this problem. In the revised manuscript we have modified sentences involving ‘a trend towards increased risk of death’ in the Abstract and Discussion sections. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275888.r004
26 Sep 2022 Decision Letter - Salvatore De Rosa, Editor Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysis PONE-D-21-22189R2 Dear Dr. Yin, 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, Salvatore De Rosa Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The authors have amended the manuscript according to the criticism raised. I have no further comments Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275888.r005
Formally Accepted
2 Oct 2022 Acceptance Letter - Salvatore De Rosa, Editor PONE-D-21-22189R2 Safety of paclitaxel-coated devices in the femoropopliteal arteries: A systematic review and meta-analysis Dear Dr. Yin: 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. Salvatore De Rosa Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275888.r006

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .