Maternal morbidity and mortality associated with interpregnancy

Report from the BMJ's full Editorial Committee – 19 June 2000

Members of the meeting were:
Sandra Goldbeck-Wood
Teifion Davies
Ian Forgacs
Stephen Evans

Decision: Reject and offer to reconsider a revised version
Nature of Decision: Majority
 

We read this paper with interest, and would like to work towards publishing a revised version. However, I am afraid we had too many problems with it in its present form to feel able to offer publication as it stands. We would, however, be keen to look again at a revised version which addresses convincingly the points raised by the clinical and statistical reviewers, and the following few points:

  1. Our main concern with this study was the lack of demographic data. It seemed to us that confounding by socio-economic status is a very real possibility here, and we would want to see this discussed critically.
  2. It seems to us that the long interpregnancy interval and its relation with pre-eclampsia is very likely to be confounded by change of partner. We would question whether you should omit these data, since they can tell the critical reader little.
  3. Would you please tell us how often last menstrual period dates were corrected by scan dates.
  4. We felt you "under sold" your study in the section entitled "what this paper adds". We feel you could make clear that this is the first adequately powered study to control four confounders (if we have understood your introduction correctly).
  5. We feel you should remove the emphasis on BMI, considering how late some women booked. These data will necessarily be unreliable, when some women booked as late as 24 weeks or even later.
Our statistician had a number of points to make, which I will enclose as a separate document.

With the revised version of your paper, please would you submit a covering letter detailing in point by point fashion how you have answered each of the queries. Before this report leaves our offices your paper will be checked through by one of our technical editors. He or she may enclose some checklists and guidance notes to help you revise the paper into BMJ style. Please respond to these. Would you also please enclose a word count.