Integrated care pathways in neurosurgery: A systematic review

Keng Siang Lee; Stefan Yordanov; Daniel Stubbs; Ellie Edlmann; Alexis Joannides; Benjamin Davies

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255628

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 13, 2021
1 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Ehab Farag, Editor PONE-D-21-08319 Integrated care pathways in Neurosurgery: A systematic review PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Keng Siang Lee 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. I would appreciate if you pay a careful attention in your response to the reviewer's comments. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 14 2021 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. 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Revision 1
15 Jul 2021 Author Response Professor Ehab Farag, MD FRCA FASA Academic Editor PLOS ONE 15 July 2021 Dear Professor Ehab Farag, Re. Integrated care pathways in Neurosurgery: A systematic review [PONE-D-21-08319] We thank you for the editorial and reviewers’ comments, and for providing us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We appreciate the careful review and constructive suggestions from all reviewers and have responded to the comments below. Following this letter are the review comments with our response in italics, including how and where the text was modified. Enclosed are two copies of the edited manuscript, one with the changes highlighted using the Microsoft Word Tracker system and a second copy with the changes in normal typeface. The revision has been developed in consultation with all co-authors, and each author has given approval to the final form of this revision. Thank you for your consideration. Keng Siang Lee and Benjamin Davies Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. Department of Clinical Neurosurgery, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Email: kl17746@bristol.ac.uk (KSL) Email: bd375@cam.ac.uk (BD) 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 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. Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have now formatted the revised manuscript accordingly to the journal’s requirement. 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: Partly Response: Thank you. We have responded further to your additional comments below. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Response: Thank you. Given the heterogeneity in data reporting, formal meta-analysis of the included studies was not possible. Therefore, we felt it was more appropriate to report the data narratively, with descriptive statistics only. This has, we believe, enabled a comprehensive overview of studies developing ICPs for Neurosurgery, including a recognition of potential limitations that should inform their development in the future. 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 Response: Thank you. 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 Response: Thank you. 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: The manuscript does not discuss what it was meant to find out possibly due to lack of data. The discussion is also vague and extensive. Clearcut the goals and outcome with a focussed discussion would be better. Response: Thank you – despite a comprehensive search strategy, there is somewhat limited published examples of ICP in surgery Whilst we think these findings support value in their role, across different neurosurgical disciplines, our detailed analysis of their development, design and evaluation identified weaknesses compared to best practice in ICP development. Due to the heterogeneity in the data, only a narrative synthesis was possible which has created a lengthy article. However, overall we feel that this is a comprehensive representation of the field currently, and therefore a useful resource for others to build on. We have made various amendments to the text to highlight the aims, and clarify the message. These changes have been made particularly in the subsection ‘Future neurosurgical ICPs should consider the growing methodological literature around their design and evaluation’. We hope these now meet your approval. 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: No Response: Thank you for taking time to review our manuscript and providing constructive feedback which could only improve our work. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255628.r002
21 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Ehab Farag, Editor Integrated care pathways in Neurosurgery: A systematic review PONE-D-21-08319R1 Dear Dr. Keng Siang Lee 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, Ehab Farag, MD FRCA FASA Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255628.r003
Formally Accepted
23 Jul 2021 Acceptance Letter - Ehab Farag, Editor PONE-D-21-08319R1 Integrated care pathways in Neurosurgery: A systematic review Dear Dr. Lee: 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. Ehab Farag Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255628.r004

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