PONE-D-24-01838Proportions and determinants of successful surgical repair of obstetric fistula in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zeleke,

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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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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Well written and acceptable to publish.

Relevant review has been performed. Methodology is well explained. Study variables are specified as per clinical significance for the clinical outcome. Statistical tests applied are appropriate.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for offering this opportunity to review manuscript by Zeleke et al. titled "Proportions and determinants of successful surgical repair of obstetric fistula in low and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis". It is interesting topic of the moment and I carefully reviewed the manuscript.

I would like to applaud authors for the amount of work they put together in this manuscript. With following minor revisions manuscript can be accepted for further processing

I have few minor comments

1. Authors are recommended to check the publisher guideline and edit the draft adhering to the guideline: in particular formatting, reference management (style, and uniformity) etc. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines

2. I believe this statement may be partly untrue (Introduction section, last paragarph) “However, to the authors' knowledge, no systematic review and meta-analysis study has been conducted on the proportion of successful surgical repair outcomes and determinants of surgical repair outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.”

3. Discussion: It is recommended to have rigorous discussion taking consideration of the systematic reviews and meta-analysis on this topic. There are handful of meta-analysis authors can look for and compare and contrast the findings and have robust discussions. Such meta-analysis can be those including earlier publications or recent data (eg. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34981462/) including data from publications after significant improvements in contemporary practice of fistula repairs (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11934-017-0708-5 ).

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Gehanath Baral

Reviewer #2: No

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Proportions and determinants of successful surgical repair of obstetric fistula in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis

PONE-D-24-01838R1

Dear Dr. Zeleke,

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.

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Kind regards,

Ganesh Dangal, MD, FICS, FRCOG

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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