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 d
ense 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.
