Reply to Oltean and Olausson

Excerpt

Dear Sir: We thank Dr. Oltean and Olausson for their interest regarding our work [1]. We agree with Dr. Oltean and Olausson that the scoring system for intestinal ischemia–reperfusion initially proposed by Chiu [2] and later completed by Park et al. [3] is reliable and reproducible. However, in our opinion, the modified Chiu’s score is also a good method by which to grade intestinal ischemia–reperfusion injury for the following reasons. In the studies performed by Hei et al. [4], Cao et al. [5] and Zhang et al. [6], the modified Chiu’s score was used to grade intestinal ischemia–reperfusion injury. Their results showed that the modified Chiu’s score could also clearly distinguish the extent of intestinal injury. That means that this scoring system has been accepted by other researchers. Secondly, we had consulted two senior pathologists before choosing scoring systems for our experiments, and both of them thought that the modified Chiu’s score was the same as Chiu’s score in nature, but modified Chiu’s score provided more detail in grading the extent of intestinal injury. Moreover, we used Chiu’s score to evaluate intestinal injury at the same time and got the same results as we did with the modified Chiu’s score in terms of the relative severity of injury among groups. Taken together, modified Chiu’s score is as effective as Chiu’s score for grading intestinal ischemia–reperfusion injury. Finally, in order to further confirm the existence of intestinal injury, we also employed two additional variables, intestinal lactic acid level and wet-to-dry weight ratio, and the results were in line with findings obtained with the modified Chiu’s score. …