Longitudinal impact of screening colonoscopy on greenhouse gas emissions

Hasiya Yusuf; Vinita Gupta; Ikponmwosa Osaghae; Abhishek Kumar

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307133

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 19, 2024
21 Jun 2024 Decision Letter - Alejandro Piscoya, Editor PONE-D-24-11124Longitudinal Impact of Screening Colonoscopy on Greenhouse Gas EmissionPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kumar, 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 Aug 05 2024 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, Alejandro Piscoya Academic 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. 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. [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: I Don't Know 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: 1. I wonder why the authors decided to narrow the target population from 45-77 to 55-65. The authors briefly touched base with the idea that the actual amounts would be different since they restricted the age period of the subjects. But I still do not understand why a narrowed age scale. 2. To calculate the carbon footprint the authors calculated the overall burden of the diagnosis of cancer which is reasonable. However, I wonder if they included the follow up colonoscopies after the first initial screening in the analysis. To claim that only a single-initial colonoscopy prevents all those cancers is too simplistic. We need to include all the follow-up screenings as well to see the actual benefit of colonoscopy. 3. Hopefully, as a next step the authors would compare stool-based screenings with endoscopic procedures. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, Just to comment that on page 5 that group 2 of patients included in the NordICC trial was not offered screening... This seems unethical to me; those individuals were deprived of the opportunity for detection. ****** 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: Akif Altinbas 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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS ONE, Mayo-2024.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307133.r001
Revision 1
23 Jun 2024 Author Response Title of Paper: “Longitudinal Impact of Screening Colonoscopy on Greenhouse Gas Emission” Initial decision: Revise & resubmit Corresponding Author: Dr. Abhishek Kumar, MD Dear Dr., Chenette, On behalf of myself and my co-authors, I submit the enclosed revised manuscript titled “Longitudinal Impact of Screening Colonoscopy on Greenhouse Gas Emission” for publication in your journal. We appreciate the opportunity to revise our submission and to make relevant changes as recommended. We look forward to your review of our revised submission. Thank you for your invaluable feedback and for the opportunity. General comments 1. I found your article to be very well-written, original, and highly relevant, given the current times. It is very well-structured and thought-out. Response: We thank the reviewer for the kind feedback 2. On page 7, you mention that approval was not required... Why is that? Response: Approval was not required as data and other information presented in the manuscript were publicly available or previously published. This has been clarified in the manuscript to read, “Approval was not required or obtained from the institutional review board for this study as all study data and information were from publicly available sources or previously published research articles” 3. On page 14, where the study limitations are listed, we should also consider transfers due to treatment complications (hospitalizations, extra trips to be evaluated by their doctors for the presence of uncommon symptoms, etc.). Response: We thank the reviewers for pointing this out. In response, we have added the sentence, “Patient visits due to cancer-associated complications, such as ED visits or hospitalizations, were also excluded from the analysis. Only standard visits that are common to patients based on cancer stage were included in the analysis”. Reviewer #1 comments 1. I wonder why the authors decided to narrow the target population from 45-77 to 55-65. The authors briefly touched base with the idea that the actual amounts would be different since they restricted the age period of the subjects. But I still do not understand why a narrowed age scale. Response: We limited the target population to 55-65 years because this is the study population that was used in the Nordicc study. We have no study-based colonoscopy screening data for ages 45-77 years, although we acknowledge that this would have been a more appropriate age category. 2. To calculate the carbon footprint the authors calculated the overall burden of the diagnosis of cancer which is reasonable. However, I wonder if they included the follow up colonoscopies after the first initial screening in the analysis. To claim that only a single-initial colonoscopy prevents all those cancers is too simplistic. We need to include all the follow-up screenings as well to see the actual benefit of colonoscopy. Response: We thank the reviewer for this important observation. As noted, only participants who received a first initial screening were included in the analysis of the Nordicc trial. Similarly, only estimates of screening colonoscopies were used to calculate the overall burden of the diagnosis, with the exclusion of estimates from surveillance screenings. The decision to exclude surveillance colonoscopies was made to ensure uniformity between the methodology of the Nordicc trial and our current paper. We, however, acknowledge that including surveillance colonoscopies will provide more robust estimates that may be closer to the true estimates. However, as emphasized in our limitations and methodology, the goal was to err on the side of underestimation. In addition, our team is considering a further exploration of cancer diagnosis from screening. This study will assess both surveillance and routine colonoscopies alike. 3. Hopefully, as a next step the authors would compare stool-based screenings with endoscopic procedures. Response: We agree that it would be important to compare stool-based screenings with endoscopic procedures. We hope to examine this in a separate study in the future. Reviewer #2 Comments 1. Just to comment that on page 5 that group 2 of patients included in the NordICC trial was not offered screening... This seems unethical to me; those individuals were deprived of the opportunity for detection. Response: Please note that patients in group two were not offered screening as colorectal cancer screening was not the standard of care in trial regions at the time. We have included the sentence “……. (routine screening was not standard of care in the study regions at the time of the study) for clarification. As a reminder, all authors have seen and approved the submitted and revised manuscript, please feel free to contact me through e-mail at research.ak@gmail.com. Thank you again for taking the time to review our revised manuscript. Sincerely, Abhishek Kumar, M.D Assistant Professor of Hematology and Oncology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Jacobi Medical Center Building 1, 3N20 1400 Pelham Parkway S, Bronx, N.Y – USA Email: research.ak@gmail.com Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response letter. Plosone.FINAL.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307133.r002
2 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Alejandro Piscoya, Editor Longitudinal Impact of Screening Colonoscopy on Greenhouse Gas Emission PONE-D-24-11124R1 Dear Dr. Kumar, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Alejandro Piscoya Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307133.r003
Formally Accepted
11 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - Alejandro Piscoya, Editor PONE-D-24-11124R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kumar, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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 Professor Alejandro Piscoya Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307133.r004

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 .