Evaluation of the quality of guidelines for sublingual immunotherapy of allergic rhinitis

Abstract

Background: Guidelines are intended to facilitate evidence-based clinical decision-making and knowledge translation; however, the quality and rigor of the guidelines are different. This study was conducted to assess the quality of sublingual immunotherapy guidelines for allergic rhinitis, in order to provide a reference for evidence-based clinical treatment and management of sublingual immunotherapy.

Methods: Using both Chinese and English search methods, articles were obtained from PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, CNKI, CBM, WanFang Data, VIP, and other databases from the construction of the database to September 2020. The AGREE II instrument was used by two researchers to independently evaluate the quality of the extracted articles, and the consistency of the researchers was evaluated using the inter-group correlation coefficient.

Results: Ten articles were included in this study, of which two articles ranked A level, six articles ranked B level, and two articles ranked C level. The six sections of AGREE II included scope and aim, clarity, participant, applicability, rigor, and editorial independence, with standardized scores of 78.06%, 45.83%, 42.81%, 77.50%, 50.42%, and 46.25%, respectively.

Conclusion: The quality of the current guidelines for sublingual immunotherapy is average. The formulation methodology and reporting standards of these guidelines must be developed. By standardizing the treatment of sublingual immunotherapy properly, it is recommended that guideline makers refer to the AGREE II to formulate high-quality guidelines and promote their wide application.

Keywords: AGREE II; Allergic rhinitis; Guideline; Sublingual immunotherapy.