Evaluation of the quality of Colombian Pediatrics Clinical Practice Guidelines

Abstract

DOI: 10.1016/j.rcpe.2015.12.001

Introduction

One of the millennium milestones is aimed at ensuring the health of children in Colombia. The Instute for Technological Evaluation in Health (Instituto de Evaluación Tecnológica en Salud) has developed ten clinical practice guidelines that seek to unify clinical, diagnostic and treatment concepts of childhood illness. The clinical practice guidelines are systematically developing recommendations to assist decision making by health professionals and patients, constituting a link between research and clinical practice. The aim of this study was to assess the methodological quality of Colombian clinical practice guidelines in paediatrics and generate explicit recommendations on their use.

Methodology

The Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) tool was used. Three independent reviewers assessed each domain and graded them on a standardised 0-100% scale. The level of agreement between raters was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient.

Results

Clinical practice guidelines cover a broad spectrum of childhood diseases. In general, they obtained scores between 74% and 98%, classified as moderate to high quality. The guidelines for leukaemia and congenital abnormalities obtained the highest score, and asthma the lowest. The agreement between raters was very good for most domains.

Conclusions

Our assessment shows that paediatric guidelines have a moderate to high quality and, therefore, they are recommended for use in clinical practice. Domains like rigour of the development and applicability should be improved