Biomechanical Particularities in the Therapy of the Rheumatic Knee

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript by Biehl al ” Biomechanical Specialties in rheumatoid knee joints”

The manuscript is interesting in its field, well presented and showing an overview of the potential procedures for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

I recommend major revision for the paper:

• The authors should improve the english language
• The author should include a paragraph regarding the use of natural anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds for arthritis. Several articles are available with in vivo studies on arthritis and chronic treatment with natural compounds individually or in combination that have demonstrated the decrease of inflammatory parameters during arthritis. suggested a therapy that could be combined with surgery to increase the yield of the procedure.
• The author should update the bibliography. (For example in the DOI: 3390/antiox9060511, DOI: 10.1186/s13075-019-2048-y)
• The author should rewrite the conclusions of the manuscript that are not clear with the aim of this review

Author Response

Biomechanical particularities in the therapy of the rheumatic knee

applsci-1005906

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your willingness to review my manuscript in detail and give me suggestions for improving the article.

I have worked on the points of criticism and hope to have improved the article so that it can be accepted by you and published. To the points of criticism in detail:

1. The authors should improve the English language

After a completely new editing of the manuscript, I have tried to improve the language with the help of my colleagues and various editor programs. A professional revision e.g. via the Language Editing of MDPI was not possible for me due to the tight time schedule.

If you still consider it is necessary, gladly commission this.

2. The author should include a paragraph regarding the use of natural anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds for arthritis. Several articles are available with in vivo studies on arthritis and chronic treatment with natural compounds individually or in combination that have demonstrated the decrease of inflammatory parameters during arthritis. suggested a therapy that could be combined with surgery to increase the yield of the procedure.

I have completely revised the section on the conservative therapy of rheumatoid arthritis and also critically reviewed the recommended articles, supplemented and inserted further articles via a literature search.

3. The author should update the bibliography. (For example, in the DOI: 3390/antiox9060511, DOI: 10.1186/s13075-019-2048-y)

I have revised and updated the bibliography.

4. The author should rewrite the conclusions of the manuscript that are not clear with the aim of this review

I revised and rewrote the conclusions according to the aim of the work.

Thank you again for your review,

Kind regards

Christoph Biehl

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper entitled "Biomechanical Specialties in rheumatoid knee joints" focuses on an interesting and important topic in clinical practice.

It is an unstructured review, which contains 31 references (out of them: 4 published before 2010). Considering the clinical nature of the paper, this number seems rather low. Furthermore, no description of the procedure used for acquiring reference studies was given. This makes it difficult to judge the completeness of the review. I suggest to look into the PRISMA guidelines and improve the flow of the manuscript.

The paper would benefit from an introductory section, which provides the rationale and summarizes the contents.

The conclusions are very vague and too short. 

The title of the manuscript does not fully reflect its content. It is too vague, while, in my opinion, the paper focuses more on clinical aspects rather than biomechanics.

The formating of the text differsfrom that of the template in some sections (typographic alignment and spacing).

Author Response

Biomechanical particularities in the therapy of the rheumatic knee

applsci-1005906

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your willingness to review my manuscript in detail and give me suggestions for improving the article.

I have worked on the points of criticism and hope to have improved the article so that it can be accepted by you and published. To the points of criticism in detail:

1. It is an unstructured review, which contains 31 references (out of them: 4 published before 2010). Considering the clinical nature of the paper, this number seems rather low.

Thank you very much for the honest assessment, I have thereupon again carried out a literature research in various databases and updated the list of publications.

2. Furthermore, no description of the procedure used for acquiring reference studies was given. This makes it difficult to judge the completeness of the review. I suggest to look into the PRISMA guidelines and improve the flow of the manuscript.

According to your recommendation, I have done several researches with PRISMA on the keywords discussed in the manuscript and described this acquiring process in the manuscript. I hope this meets with her approval. A display board would have changed the focus of my work, so I decided not to use it.

3. The paper would benefit from an introductory section, which provides the rationale and summarizes the contents.

I have revised and updated the introductory section with the rational.

4. The conclusions are very vague and too short. 

I revised and rewrote the conclusion according to the aim of the work.

5. The title of the manuscript does not fully reflect its content. It is too vague, while, in my opinion, the paper focuses more on clinical aspects rather than biomechanics.

I have revised the title according to the focus of the work.

6. The formating of the text differs from that of the template in some sections (typographic alignment and spacing).

I reformatted the text again and paid special attention to the MDPI citation style.

Thank you again for your review,

Kind regards

Christoph Biehl

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been significantly improved. The authors have responded to all of my comments. The study now describes the approach used to acquire references and the number of references is adequate for the field.