Guidelines, clinical practice recommendations, position papers and consensus statements: Definition, preparation, role and application

摘要

Daily clinical decisions at the bedside, rules of operation at hospitals and clinics, and health spending by governments and insurers have become more and more influenced by clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in last years [1], Moreover CPGs are increasingly the final argument against or in favour of physicians in medical malpractice litigation. Therefore, addressing the issue of CPGs quality is now unavoidable for many specialties [2-7]. To this end, editorial teams of medical scientific journals have a key role in keeping and improving the quality of new CPGs [8 -10]. Unfortunately editorial teams, particularly those belonging to sub-speciality societies, may not be aware of such responsibility and may be more prone to publish CPGs without peer review [9], being exposed to an increased risk of low quality CPGs.