[Why not standard practice guidelines in Japan?].

The issue of medical practice guidelines has attracted the attention of doctors and health care professionals in Western countries since the middle 1980s. Such guidelines aim to assist in clinical decision-making in order to reduce variations in care and unnecessary costs for delivered health care service, and to improve the outcomes of medical care. Strangely, however, there is no interest or attention given to this topic in the medical and health care fields in Japan. As the president of the 71st Japanese Gastric Cancer Association, the author hopes to generate interest in this topic by opening a symposium at the annual meeting of the JGCA this year. As an introduction to this session, the present paper provides a short review of medical practice guidelines, their development cycle, and their advantages and disadvantages.