Quality assessment of Chinese clinical guidelines in 2015

Article type
Authors
Wang Q1, Chen YL1, Wang XQ1, Ling J1, Yuan T1, Gu WJ1, Yang N1, Zhou Q2, Yang KH1, Shi XE3
1Evidence-Based Medicine Center of Lanzhou University; Key Laboratory of Evidence Based Medicine and Knowledge Translation of Gansu Province; Chinese GRADE Center
2The First Clinical Medical College of Lanzhou University
3Evidence-Based Medicine Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou;Key Laboratory of Evidence-Based Medicine and Knowledge Translation of Gansu Province, Lanzhou;Gansu Rehabilitation Center Hospital, Lanzhou
Abstract
Background: Clinical practice guidelines play an important role in improving the quality of healthcare and saving medical costs. The evaluation of guidelines could help the implementation and dissemination of recommendations. Our research group followed the quality of Chinese guidelines published from 1993 in journals. The government entrusted us to assess the quality of guidelines in 2015.

Objectives: To evaluate the quality of Chinese clinical practice guidelines published in journals in 2015.

Methods: We identified Chinese guidelines by searching CNKI, CBM and WanFang Data afrom January 2015 to December 2015. We excluded the guidelines that not include treatment recommendations. Each guideline was screened and reviewed using AGREEⅡby two researchers independently. The disagreement was solved with discussion. At last, we invited a multi-discipline expert committee to review the annual 2015 guideline report by face-to-face conference consensus.

Results: A total of 74 guidelines with treatment recommendations published in 2015 were included, The results of the six domains of AGREEⅡwere as follows: Scope and Purpose (10.1%), Stakeholder Involvement (7.9%), Rigour of Development (8.7%), Clarity of Presentation (13.8%), Applicability (7.3%), and Editorial Independence (11.1%).

Conclusions: The number of Chinese practice guidelines in 2015 have been improved than before. However, the quality was still lower than the average level of international guidelines. Our government started to focus on the practice guidelines and would like to collaborate with a multi-discipline expert committee to issue the annual report of Chinese from 2015. Also, they would like to establish the national guideline database. It is expected to promote the development and implementation of Chinese high-quality guidelines and improve the health quality and safety in China.