Spontaneous Post-COVID-19 Pneumothorax in a Patient with No Prior Respiratory Tract Pathology: A Case Report
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is well writen important case report. Only one problem is a figure. This X-ray is difficult to understand. Where is the explanation of figures as figure legends? Figure 3 is for what?? First you need to show the Xp and CT at first examination. Then you need to show Xp and CT at the pneumothorax event if you have the data.
Author Response
Dear reviewers, Thank you very much for your kind and helpful remarks, corrections, and suggestions. According to your requests: 1) the Xp and CT at first examination (showing no blebs) and on readmission (with pneumothorax) have been presented with the apposite explanations; 2) past history, excluding smoking, alcohol abuse, and HIV has been added to the text; 3) family history (of no specific lung disease) has been added to the text; 4) the patient`s denial of taking medicine for UC such as steroid or 5-ASA has also been added to the text; 5) a Table for laboratory findings has been provided; 6) grammar has been checked in detail, and corrections have been made.Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, thank you for asking me to review this. This is a well described complication of Covid-19. There are a number of large scale studies such as Martinelli et al ERJ 2020, and Marciniak et al ERJ 2021 which have tabulated the incidence of pneumothorax in covid-19 which have attempted to quantify mortality. Whilst this is the first case report i can find from South Africa, i am not sure what this adds to the literature as this is now well known.
It is well written, and well presented- some of the language must change- such as do not say it is rare, just say 1% of patients will get this, and it is not necessarily related to ventilation etc
There are quite a few grammar errors for example such as in the discussion bit 'esclused' which should be excluded
The final decision will be up to the editors as whilst this is publishable, it does not add much to the available literature.
Well done for writing this up though
Can you also specify if patient consent was obtained/or waived?
I cannot also see the images- is that a formatting issue?
Author Response
Dear reviewers, Thank you very much for your kind and helpful remarks, corrections, and suggestions. According to your requests: 1) the Xp and CT at first examination (showing no blebs) and on readmission (with pneumothorax) have been presented with the apposite explanations; 2) past history, excluding smoking, alcohol abuse, and HIV has been added to the text; 3) family history (of no specific lung disease) has been added to the text; 4) the patient`s denial of taking medicine for UC such as steroid or 5-ASA has also been added to the text; 5) a Table for laboratory findings has been provided; 6) grammar has been checked in detail, and corrections have been made.Author Response File: Author Response.docx
