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Review
. 2014 Oct 10;9(10):e106762.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0106762. eCollection 2014.

Systematic review of clinical practice guidelines related to multiple sclerosis

Jia Guo  1 , Chuang Cheng  1 , Weiping Yan  1 , Guanghui Xu  2 , Jinzhou Feng  1 , Tianzhu Wang  1 , Cindy Si Chen  3 , Xinyue Qin  1
Affiliations
Review

Systematic review of clinical practice guidelines related to multiple sclerosis

Jia Guo et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: High quality clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) can provide clinicians with explicit recommendations on how to manage health conditions and bridge the gap between research and clinical practice. Unfortunately, the quality of CPGs for multiple sclerosis (MS) has not been evaluated.

Objective: To evaluate the methodological quality of CPGs on MS using the AGREE II instrument.

Methods: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we searched four databases and two websites related to CPGs, including the Cochrane library, PubMed, EMBASE, DynaMed, the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), and Chinese Biomedical Literature database (CBM). The searches were performed on September 20th 2013. All CPGs on MS were evaluated by the AGREE II instrument. The software used for analysis was SPSS 17.0.

Results: A total of 27 CPGs on MS met inclusion criteria. The overall agreement among reviews was good or substantial (ICC was above 0.70). The mean scores for each of all six domains were presented as follows: scope and purpose (mean ± SD: 59.05 ± 16.13), stakeholder involvement (mean ± SD: 29.53 ± 17.67), rigor of development (mean ± SD: 31.52 ± 21.50), clarity of presentation (mean ± SD: 60.39 ± 13.73), applicability (mean ± SD: 27.08 ± 17.66), editorial independence (mean ± SD: 28.70 ± 22.03).

Conclusions: The methodological quality of CPGs for MS was acceptable for scope, purpose and clarity of presentation. The developers of CPGs need to pay more attention to editorial independence, applicability, rigor of development and stakeholder involvement during the development process. The AGREE II instrument should be adopted by guideline developers.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Searching and selecting guidelines flowchart.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

This study is supported by National Key Clinical Specialties Construction Program of China. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.