Characterization of a Cohort of Patients with Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension from Northeastern Colombia (REHINO Study)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Fajardo-Rivero and colleagues presented an interesting overview of REHINO study in which they characterized a cohort of patients with chronic thromboembolic hypertension from northeastern Colombia. The manuscript is generally well-written and portrays a lack of diagnostic and treatment capabilities for this disease in Colombia for which I think is the crucial aspect of this work. I have no major objections except some minor amendments that should be undertaken for this manuscript to be considered for publication.
Minor comments:
- Please change the word "crhronic" into "chronic", line 17 of the Abstract
- Change and explain the word "catheterims", line 24 of the Abstract
- Explain what you mean by functional class III and IV, by which scale, which functional system is used? Make it clear.
- Define what "Angiotac" means in Table 1
- Change word "nifedipino" into "nifedipine" - Table 3
- While the authors think that the disease prevalence of CTEPH is "underrated" in Colombia due to the low suspicion index, could they reflect their prevalence estimate with respect to general European or US statistics, or Asia? A brief paragraph on this in the Discussion section would be welcome.
Author Response
- Please change the word "crhronic" into "chronic", line 17 of the Abstract. OK Please provide your response in red
- Change and explain the word "catheterims", line 24 of the Abstract. OK : the onset of symptoms to diagnosis was 14 months. Please provide your response in red
- Explain what you mean by functional class III and IV, by which scale, which functional system is used? Make it clear.OK: “…according to the world health organization (WHO) criteria” Please provide your response in red
- Define what "Angiotac" means in Table 1. OK Computed tomography Angiogram (CT-Angiogram) Please provide your response in red
- Change word "nifedipino" into "nifedipine" - Table 3 OK Please provide your response in red
- While the authors think that the disease prevalence of CTEPH is "underrated" in Colombia due to the low suspicion index, could they reflect their prevalence estimate with respect to general European or US statistics, or Asia? A brief paragraph on this in the Discussion section would be welcome.: The Spanish registry of pulmonary arterial hypertension REHAP for the year 2012 reported an incidence of 0.9 cases per year and a prevalence of 3.2 cases per million adults [14].
Reviewer 2 Report
The study is retrospective and observational. Numbers are low and the findings are not new in terms of specificity. More effort should be made in improving english language and also data presentation. In addition more thinking should be put in understanding what is that the Authors want to say with this study/data. I understand that the peculiarity of the numbers for the Authors is the fact that this is a series/cohort from Colombia but this is not a study about a rare or poorly known clinical entity. Its is well known and there are international guidelines. Some data in tables are wrongly presented and they do not add up, and some data are missing. This looks a bit more like a registry but with low numbers.
Author Response
The English language was substantially improved and certain data that did not contribute to the study were eliminated. We try to present the data correctly and supplement the missing data.
Data in Latin America and Colombia are scarce. In Colombia it is considered an orphan disease and to our knowledge there are no studies of this type. Although it is a retrospective registry, it is important to understand the characteristics of patients with CTEPH from Colombia and Latin America.
