Risk of testicular cancer in men with abnormal semen characteristics
 

Report from the BMJ's full editorial committee meeting - 17 April 2000

Members of the committee were:

Roger Robinson (Chair and note taker)

Chris Martyn

Tom Treasure

Hazel Inskip

These comments are an attempt to summarise the discussions of the editorial committee. They are not an exact transcript. Referees reports are always fully taken into account by the committee, but the final decision an acceptance or rejection of a paper rests with the editorial committee, who take into account not only the scientific merits of the paper but also its originality and interest to a general readership in comparison with other submitted papers. We are only able to accept a small proportion even of the good papers submitted to us.

Decision: Accept subject to a satisfactory revision

Nature of Decision: Unanimous
 

The committee were unanimous in deciding that this was a valuable further contribution on the relationship between infertility and testicular cancer. We thought the referees report was excellent and helpful and have only relatively minor further points to make.

1. Concerning the effect of time since semen analysis, we thought the statement on page 6 was a little misleading. It suggests a high risk in the first two years followed by a step down and a relatively constant value thereafter. What table 2 seems to suggest if anything is a downward trend, even though this was not found to be significant.
2. We did not understand the sentence in the second paragraph on page 9 which begins "alternatively". We would suggest keeping the first two sentences of that paragraph and omitting the rest.
3. There is one point of caution about the interpretation. Strictly speaking, what you have shown is that in men belonging to couples who have fertility problems, low sperm counts are associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer. You have not actually shown that low or abnormal sperm counts would have the same significance in men where there had been no question so far about fertility problems.
4. We felt that the terms "fertility", "sub-fertile" etc were used in a way that might mislead or puzzle the general reader. Our understanding would be that fertile and fertility refer to producing pregnancies or having children, not to sperm counts in themselves. However, for example in table 4 you use the term "sub-fertility measure" to refer to characteristics of the sperm count. It may be that this is the conventional usage among specialists in this field, but we think perhaps it needs explanation. For example, one reader was puzzled by the expression on page 6 "the not sub-fertile groups" when all the men in the study had been attending the clinic because the couple had fertility problems.
5. When you revise and return your manuscript, please take note of all the following points:

b Do not exceed 2,000 words of text. Please include a word count with your resubmission.

c The title should include the study design.

d Please include a paragraph for "This week in the BMJ".

e Please include a box saying "what is already known in this topic" and "what this paper adds".

f Please include a statement of authors and contributorship, and supply signatures of all the authors if you have not already done this.