Seminal Vesicle Treatment for Localized Prostate Cancer Treated with External Beam Radiotherapy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title:

Seminal Vesicle Treatment for Localized Prostate Cancer 2 Treated with External Beam Radiotherapy

Review article:

Single-institutional retrospective study conducted on a good sample of 375 patients with localized prostate cancer treated with normofractionated radical radiotherapy with or without concomitant hormone therapy.

The interesting purpose of the study is to retrospectively evaluate seminal vesicle contouring by the radiation oncologist according to risk class, where intra-doctor or intra-institutional variability may be evident, while the new guidelines aim to standardize the procedure.

Highlights of the study:

1 Current topic of interest

2 Appropriate sample

Weaknesses of the study:

1 Retrospective study

Request for revision:

A. In line 22 it is reported that all patients were treated with normographed RT 1.8/2Gy fraction, while in Table 1 it is reported as Prescribed Number of Fractions range 20-41 is it possible to explain the figure?? certain patients were treated with moderate hypofractionation?? in the case does specified in Materials and Methods.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a paper about "Seminal Vesicle Treatment for Localized Prostate Cancer Treated with External Beam Radiotherapy".

The topic is absolutely interesting and the series contains a respectable number of patients.

The introduction explains the rationale of the study and methodology is clearly described by the authors.

I have some comments that I would like the authors to address as follows:

1) Please make sure that all acronyms used in the text (and in the abstract) have been previously explained

2) Since most of the rational is based on the Memorial Sloan Kettering Prostate Cancer Nomogram it would be better to explain for readers who are not very familiar what it means

3) Since the authors were able to treat almost 400 patient in one year, why did they choose to use only this accrual period (2010-2011)? Why did not hey choose to provide more data to obtain more solid data?

4) In such a short period there should be no huge differences in the expertise of the radiation oncologists involved (no differences due to retirement nor to turnover) so it would definitively be an addition to state how many radiation oncologists were involved in the contouring and planning activities and also to provide their level of expertise (expressed in years)

5) Was the contouring/planning based on an independent check process (with senior doctors reviewing juniors for example)? 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comments