Safety and Feasibility of Dental Evaluation in Patients Undergoing Heart Valve Replacement Surgery: Retrospective Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled Safety and Feasibility of Dental Evaluation in Patients 2 Undergoing Heart Valve Replacement Surgery: A Retrospective 3 Analysis, written by Lara Sviličić et al.
The study assess the safety and feasibility of dental evaluation in patients undergoing heart valve replacement surgery. The study was retrospective study done on the data from the clinical settings.
The introduction part is some how very limited and did not bring more details from the 2 mentioned systematic reviews and the meta analysis.
The presentation of the results may benefit from using some figures (charts) alongside the tables.
The discussion part was limited and did  not discuss the results in detail.
15 references were few in such manuscript, it can be increased to 25-30

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments and feedback on our manuscript. We greatly appreciate the time and effort you put into reviewing our submission.

We have revised the manuscript according to your comments. We believe the manuscript has been significantly improved based on your suggestions. We hope you will find the revised version to be satisfactory. Please see the attachment.

Sincerely

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is well presented with appropriate sections. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Many thanks for your kind remark. We appreciate your effort in reviewing our manuscript.

Sincerely,

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed manuscript deals with the safety and feasibility of dental evaluation in heart surgery patients with a retrospective analysis.

Authors succeed to describe well the importance of dental screening before heart surgery and its benefits. The paper is well written and the conclusions are based on the analyzed data.

Nevertheless, there are some concerns – or some issues that might further enhance the quality of the paper:

1. Data presentation in Table 1: without the underlying data, only presenting the p values is not acceptable. Please insert the numbers into the table.
2. If the year of treatment is irrelevant to all other variables, it can be removed from all the tables. Preferable, one sentence shall address this aspect in the result section
3. Under the tables, please specify which statistical test was used.
4. If the p value is written in the tables, there is no need to repeat this within the plain text. Please avoid redundancy.
5. Line 128-130: The information, that significant differences in Abio Proph for different diagnosis was observed is rather useless, if there is no explanation, what exactly was significant and how. Please add.
6. The Presentation of the performed dental procedures is biased due to the missing consideration of the indications for dental treatment. E.g.: Caries removal was performed in 2 patients. OK! But from the remaining 151 patients, how many had dental caries with the indication to perform caries removal (and presumably restorative treatment)? The reviewer presupposes: there was a number of patients not getting caries removal because they didn`t needed any. Same with Endo, Scaling, Extractions. Please look at the data and calculate how the dental treatment need was satisfied.
7. The reviewer suggests to split table 3. Describe the occurrence of complications (preferably without table) and the nr. of appointments, Nr. days and patient outcome separately (in a table).
8. Please consider to calculate percentages related to the base. The total number of complications is 3. OK. 2 delayed bleedings are 66,7% of all complications.

References are not older than 11 years.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments and feedback on our manuscript. We greatly appreciate the time and effort you put into reviewing our submission.

We have revised the manuscript according to your comments. We believe the manuscript has been significantly improved based on your suggestions. We hope you will find the revised version to be satisfactory. Please see the attachment.

Sincerely

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors updated the manuscript according to the recommendations in the 1^st review report.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for answering all concerns in a satisfactory manner.