Development of trustworthy practice guidelines

摘要

To the Editor: The Viewpoint by Dr Ransohoff and colleagues discussed how to decide which guidelines are trustworthy. The authors committed errors in describing the Appraisal of Guidelines, Research and Evaluation (AGREE) system when reviewing its limitations and comparing it with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) standards for developing practice guidelines. The authors cited the original AGREE instrument published in 2003. However, considerable research by the team led to a revised version of the tool, AGREE II, in 2010. After thorough development and evaluation by international stakeholders, AGREE II and its user's manual include supporting documentation that provide the conceptual underpinnings for each item, its opera-tionalization, and specific criteria and considerations to guide how it should be applied. Moreover, the limitations of the AGREE tool, as presented by Ransohoff et al, are factually incorrect.