  Recently, Hwang et al. [Eur. Phys. J. D. 61, 785 (2011)] and Yuan et al.
[Int. J. Theo. Phys. 50, 2403 (2011)] have proposed two efficient protocols of
secure quantum communication using 3-qubit and 4-qubit symmetric W state
respectively. These two dense coding based protocols are generalized and their
efficiencies are considerably improved. Simple bounds on the qubit efficiency
of deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) and quantum secure direct
communication (QSDC) protocols are obtained and it is shown that dense coding
is not essential for designing of maximally efficient DSQC and QSDC protocols.
This fact is used to design maximally efficient protocols of DSQC and QSDC
using 3-qubit and 4-qubit W states.
