Clarification of issues brought up by ‘Is highflow nasal cannula better for children with bronchiolitis?’
Thanks for your review (1) of our study (2).
For the search strategy, we only included two English databases as we found that most of the literature are in these two databases. However, we should have included other databases for more comprehensive search.
For the bias tool, we do notice that the reference 10 was an observational study. However, since it is a prospective cohort study, we can still use Cochrane risk of bias (ROB) to assess the bias of the study. Although Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline recommends quality assessment with detailed scores as Jadad does, we should not treat it as a solid standard. Jadad scale is too old to assess the bias of randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Cochrane ROB could provide us with more information of the bias, which is kind of strong indication of the quality. We revealed it in Figs. 2,7.
For the publication bias, we revealed the result with funnel plot. However, it is indeed better to assess the publication bias with quantitative tools as Egger’s test or Begg’s test.
Lastly, we did not perform sensitivity analysis because our primary outcomes effect size pooling showed no significant heterogeneity I2=0%, and we only included 7 studies for this outcome. However, we should have performed sensitivity analysis to check the stability of the results.
We will enhance our work and make it more convincing next time.
Acknowledgments
Funding: None.
Footnote
Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Translational Pediatrics. The article did not undergo external peer review.
Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://tp.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/tp-2022-03/coif). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
References
- Feng Q, Feng X, Liao W, et al. Is highflow nasal cannula better for children with bronchiolitis? Transl Pediatr 2022; [Crossref]
- Cao J, Cai Q, Xing Y, et al. Efficacy and safety analysis of high-flow nasal cannula in children with bronchiolitis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Transl Pediatr 2022;11:547-55. [Crossref] [PubMed]
