The Role of Ultrasound Guidance in Mini-Invasive Musculoskeletal Surgery—A Pictorial Essay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article: The role of ultrasound guidance in the mini-invasive musculo-skeletal surgery a pictorial essay

 This article presents an important research topic.

 The authors present a review of minimally invasive surgery, highlighting low-intensity ultrasound as a diagnostic tool, as well as the strength of medical ultrasonography over x-rays.

 However, the article needs to be restructured.

 The title should change: musculo skeletal to skeletal muscle.

 They must add the keywords.

 Introduction

They should expand the introduction and add background to compare ultrasound and x-ray. In addition to explaining the advantages of using ultrasound, for example, how ultrasound affects the physiological part of the tissue. How does x-ray affect the tissue part. Discuss comparisons with viable arguments.

Materials and methods.

Re-structure this section. Here is some information that would be better added in the introduction section. Describe the methodology in a coherent way and the applied techniques. Thus, as a description of the case studies that they present.

Results

They can highlight the experiences of the case studies.

list a guide, as a procedure.

Add a strong discussion of your studies shown.

Conclusions

Add conclusions.

References.

Expand the references according to the journal's requirements.

Review the english language and the technical terms they use.

Author Response

1. The title was changed and the musculoskeletal was replaced with MSK abbreviation.
It is more visible and friendly for authors.
2. The keywords were added.
3. The issues explained by the reviewer were included into extended background section.
4. This paper is a kind of review paper, which summarize the recent knowledge in the
field od MSK US in mini-invasive orthopedic treatment. Thus we deleted the material
& methods and results sections. The description of the novel methods with good
quality figures is better for authors.
5. The references were modified according to reviewers advices.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article was written on the ultrasound, which showed the importance of ultrasound. And the aim of the article, that is, quantitative assessment and a tool for monitoring through ultrasound, was excellent. However, the important contents were not researched and detailed explained in the article. At the same time, some other issues were listed as follows:

1. Line 3, was it necessary add the period (punctuation) in the title in the end?

2. What was the right formation of reference in the article when it was related to the author name? For example, (Lines 93-97), the reference number was listed in the end of the sentence without YEAR. (Lines 112-113), the YEAR was added behind the author name, which was used in the normal articles.

3. The structure of this article was showed two parts, including “INTRODUCTION” AND “MATERIALS AND METHODS”, which part was the main research in this study?

Author Response

1. The ‘period’ was deleted.
2. The references were revised according to reviewers advices.
3. The paper was reorganized according to its type.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has reviewed the role of ultrasound guidance in the mini-invasive musculo-skeletal surgery. It is a nicely composed manuscript, however, the following can also be improved:

1) The abstract can be made more concise and to the point.

2) Materials and methods section is relevant in an original contribution but not a review article. Please change accordingly.

3) Figures can be better explained with more involved labels.

4) Should include a specific paragraph regarding the future of such technique and cite relevant review articles such as: (a) DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2021.3112917 and (b) doi.org/10.1038/s41378-023-00555-7

English is fine.

Author Response

1. The Abstract section was revised accordingly.
2. The paper has a form of a review paper, a pictorial essay which together with good
quality images describes the certain topic.
3. Thank you for suggestion, nevertheless the figures were prepared with a plenty of
labels and an abundant captions and we do not see a possibility to improve the figures.
4. The paragraph “Possible future applications” was included and references were
properly cited.

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper describes the role of ultrasound guidance in mini-invasive musculoskeletal surgery. It is just like a review paper with no technical content.

The authors reported the paper with good images to show the importance of ultrasound guidance systems with other available techniques in various scenarios.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the paper and the assessment.

Reviewer 5 Report

The manuscript entitled “The role of ultrasound guidance in the mini-invasive musculo- skeletal surgery – a pictorial essay” describes role of ultrasound guidance in the mini-invasive musculo- skeletal surgery. The paper is interesting, presenting novel results scientifically precise in details. Presenting results as well as figures are of good quality. This paper could be published in Applied Sciences after some minor corrections. My specific comments to the paper are as follows:

1.      Keywords are not mentioned in the manuscript.

Some latest references are also to be cited in the article of last 5 years. Only two references are given of 2019.

Author Response

1. The keywords were added, respectively.
2. The references were revised and actualized.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors strengthened and re-structured the content of the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you for your suggestions, they have been implemented in the attached manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The research quality of the manuscript can be improved. What is important, the research content is still too small to prove the thesis theme.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you for your suggestions, they have been implemented in the attached manuscript.