Do the clinical practice guidelines for pediatric dentistry meet the quality standards? A meta-research and quality appraisal protocol using AGREE II and AGREE REX tools.

Abstract

Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are recommendations for the health care providers and a method to close the know-do gap, transferring the knowledge from the academic research to the clinician. The proposal of this systematic review is to assess the quality of published guidelines regarding Pediatric Dentistry topics using AGREE II instrument and AGREE REX tool. This study is registered on Open Science Framework (OSF). Two examiners will independently search for literature based on the PICO question and will perform a screening of the literature according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, as well as data collection and extraction. The search will be performed in different electronic databases including Medline (PubMed), Embase, Scopus, LIVIVO, Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (Lilacs), Scientific societies, and International association websites (American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry - AAPD, European Academy of Pediatric Dentistry - EAPD, Guidelines International Network (GIN), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – NICE, TRIP - Turning Research Into Practice database and Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme - SDCEP), and grey literature (ProQuest) to identify any topic regarding Pediatric Dentistry guidelines. The search strategy for this systematic review will be defined through the PICO question: “Do the clinical practice guidelines and recommendations on pediatric dentistry meet the quality standards based on the AGREE II instrument and AGREE REX tool?”. We will include evidence-based and consensus-based guidelines that address any topic related to Pediatric Dentistry, and that report on the evidence level supporting each recommendation. We will exclude any outdated documents (when they have the updated version), topics irrelevant to Pediatric Dentistry, and duplicate publications. Inter-rater reliability (Intraclass correlation coefficient) will be calculated to ensure the level of agreement among researchers. For the assessment of eligible guidelines and recommendations, the AGREE II instrument and AGREE REX tool will be used in the complete form. Lastly, descriptive statistics and linear regression models will be conducted.