Quality of recent clinical practice guidelines in anaesthesia publications using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II instrument

Preoperative Clinical Practice Guidelines for Elective Surgery. Methodological and Quality Appraisal Study

“…In 2022, O’Shaughnessy et al, assessed the quality of CPG published during the last 5 years in top anesthesia journals. With a scope beyond the preoperative care, they included 51 CPG with low scores to “stakeholder involvement”, “rigor of development” and “applicability” domains (47). Additionally, Mai et al in 2021, evaluated 96 CPG in anesthesiology practice finding “rigor of development” and “applicability” as the lowest rated domains (48).…”

“…In 2022, O'Shaughnessy et al, assessed the quality of CPG published during the last 5 years in top anesthesia journals. With a scope beyond the preoperative care, they included 51 CPG with low scores to "stakeholder involvement", "rigor of development" and "applicability" domains (47).…”

Guidelines and evidence-based recommendations in anaesthesia: where do we stand?

“…Furthermore, eight subsections of Domain 3 demonstrated a variability in scores with quality assessment of the underlying evidence base having the lowest scores. 16 Future validated Domain 3 centric scoring systems may improve the accuracy of quality assessment and make AGREE II an even more reliable tool for clinical practice guideline evaluation.…”

“…A recent review described high-quality guidelines as largely collaborative, with 78% having international involvement and 100% multi-institutional involvement. 16 International and institutional cooperation should be further emphasised in anaesthesia guideline development and also reduction in duplication of efforts. The ADAPTE, A Guideline Adaptation and Implementation Planning Resource (CAN-IMPLEMENT), and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation – Adaptation, Adoption, De Novo Development (GRADE-ADOLOPMENT) documents may play a role, having been designed for the purpose of efficiently developing and adapting clinical recommendations.…”

Evaluation of the quality of COVID-19 guidance documents in anaesthesia using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II instrument

“… 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 It consists of 6 domains with Domain 3 (Rigour of Development) widely regarded as the most important for guideline quality [ Table 1 ]. 13 , 14 , 15 Despite the availability AGREE II and other useful tools, concerns regarding the quality and integrity of guidelines in anaesthesia have existed for some time. 16 This has been amplified during the COVID-19 era due to lack of an existing evidence base, purported absence of rigour in some guideline development strategies, use of non-standard document formats, and use of confusing terminology.…”