Quality assessment of clinical practice guidelines for the management of wheezing disorders in children.

BACKGROUND

The quality of available clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for childhood wheezing disorders have not been systematically evaluated.

METHODS

CPGs were systematically evaluated by four independent reviewers using Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II instrument and the Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in HealTHcare (RIGHT) checklist. We calculated the overall agreement among reviewers with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

RESULTS

A total of 35 CPGs published between January 2000 and December 2020 were evaluated. The overall agreement among reviewers was good (ICC 0.85, 95% CI 0.83-0.87). The average CPGs score was 42% (range: 25-79). The mean scores of four domains were low: 37% for Stakeholder Involvement (range: 10-85), 28% for Rigour of Development (range: 42-81), 35% for Applicability (range: 11-73) and 24% for Editorial Independence (range: 0-83). The mean reporting rate of the RIGHT checklist was 31%. The Basic Information domain had the highest reporting rate (65%); the Review and Quality Assurance domain had the lowest rate (3%).

CONCLUSIONS

The quality of the CPGs was poor. Greater efforts are needed to improve quality in domains to provide high-quality guidelines that can be used as reliable tools for clinical decision-making.