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| LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2018 | Volume
: 5
| Issue : 2 | Page : 163 |
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Critical comment on “Hot iron rods branding, its complications: Still continue in central India”
Radha Saini
Centre for Nursing Research and Community Empowerment, Mother Mary's Institute of Nursing, Hoshiarpur, Punjab, India
| Date of Web Publication | 9-Apr-2018 |
Correspondence Address:
Radha Saini
Centre for Nursing Research and Community Empowerment, Mother Mary's Institute of Nursing, Hoshiarpur, Punjab
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/cjhr.cjhr_114_17
How to cite this article:
Saini R. Critical comment on “Hot iron rods branding, its complications: Still continue in central India”. CHRISMED J Health Res 2018;5:163 |
How to cite this URL:
Saini R. Critical comment on “Hot iron rods branding, its complications: Still continue in central India”. CHRISMED J Health Res [serial online] 2018 [cited 2022 May 23];5:163. Available from: https://www.cjhr.org/text.asp?2018/5/2/163/229582 |
Sir,
This is in reference to the article “Hot iron rods branding, its complications: Still, continue in central India” published in CHRISMED J Health Res 2017;4:264-7.[1] The authors have done a commendable job in highlighting the issue of hot iron rods branding and its complications.
However, I have a few concerns related to the methodology being adopted and results being interpreted in this study.
First, the authors have written in the material and methods that “Consecutive thirty patients diagnosed or associated with hot iron branding lesions fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria were included in the study.” Time frame of the study is not mentioned, i.e., year and date. In how many days or months, all these 30 research participants were recruited by the authors? There is no mention of the “type of research and study design” by the authors. Is it a descriptive study of all 30 patients, wherein a cross-sectional design was adopted? Descriptive research is used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied. In a cross-sectional study, the investigator measures the outcome and the exposures in the study participants at the same time.[2] The participants in a cross-sectional study are just selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria set for the study. This study is a cross-sectional study.
There is no mention of the place of study or the research setting. It is not clear to the readers that did these thirty patients landed up in the causality/emergency department of the hospital consecutively or in the skin OPD or the surgery OPD of the hospital or community health center of the hospital while they were recruited by the authors. Did all these thirty patients turn up in a single hospital or multiple hospitals? Nothing is clear about the settings. There is no mention by the authors that why the sample size was restricted to mere 30? How the sample size was calculated? What made the authors to restrict the sample to a size of 30 only? In the results, section no statistical tests are applied to infer the final results. The authenticity of the results of every research study depends largely on the accuracy of the statistical methods used by the authors. It would have been prudent rather ethical had the authors used any statistical test of significance to claim their results and then an association with the demographic variables could have been established using either t-test or Chi-square test. Merely displaying the “numbers” is unjustifiable and is not meaningful. The interpretation of [Table 5] is not congruent with the figures or numbers shown in [Table 5]. Figure number 1 and 2 exhibit the types of branding like Figure number 3 and 4 and not at all represent the statement that “All patients received treatment with no mortality” as mentioned by the authors in the last line of Results section.{Table 5}
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Mahant S, Reddy CM, Mahant S, Singh MP. Hot iron rods branding, its complications: Still continue in central India. CHRISMED J Health Res 2017;4:264-7.  [Full text] |
| 2. | Setia MS. Methodology series module 3: Cross-sectional studies. Indian J Dermatol 2016;61:261-4. [ PUBMED] [Full text] |
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