Reliable Clinical Guidelines

Status

Reliable Clinical Guidelines—Great Idea, Not-Such-A-Great Reality

Although clinical guideline recommendations about managing a given condition may differ, guidelines are, in general, considered to be important sources for individual clinical decision-making, protocol development, order sets, performance measures and insurance coverage. The Institute of Medicine [IOM] has created important recommendations that guideline developers should pay attention to—

  1. Transparency;
  2.  Management of conflict of interest;
  3.  Guideline development group composition;
  4. How the evidence review is used to inform clinical recommendations;
  5.  Establishing evidence foundations for making strength of recommendation ratings;
  6. Clear articulation of recommendations;
  7. External review; and,
  8. Updating.

Investigators recently evaluated 114 randomly chosen guidelines against a selection from the IOM standards and found poor adherence [Kung 12]. The group found that the overall median number of IOM standards satisfied was only 8 out of 18 (44.4%) of those standards. They also found that subspecialty societies tended to satisfy fewer IOM methodological standards. This study shows that there has been no change in guideline quality over the past decade and a half when an earlier study found similar results [Shaneyfeld 99].  This finding, of course, is likely to have the effect of leaving end-users uncertain as to how to best incorporate clinical guidelines into clinical practice and care improvements.  Further, Kung’s study found that few guidelines groups included information scientists (individuals skilled in critical appraisal of the evidence to determine the reliability of the results) and even fewer included patients or patient representatives.

An editorialist suggests that currently there are 5 things we need [Ransohoff]. We need:

1. An agreed-upon transparent, trustworthy process for developing ways to evaluate clinical guidelines and their recommendations.

2. A reliable method to express the degree of adherence to each IOM or other agreed-upon standard and a method for creating a composite measure of adherence.

From these two steps, we must create a “total trustworthiness score” which reflects adherence to all standards.

3. To accept that our current processes of developing trustworthy measures is a work in progress. Therefore, stakeholders must actively participate in accomplishing these 5 tasks.

4. To identify an institutional home that can sustain the process of developing measures of trustworthiness.

5. To develop a marketplace for trustworthy guidelines. Ratings should be displayed alongside each recommendation.

At this time, we have to agree with Shaneyfeld who wrote an accompanying commentary to Kung’s study [Shaneyfeld 12]:

What will the next decade of guideline development be like? I am not optimistic that much will improve. No one seems interested in curtailing the out-of-control guideline industry. Guideline developers seem set in their ways. I agree with the IOM that the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) should require guidelines to indicate their adherence to development standards. I think a necessary next step is for the AHRQ to certify guidelines that meet these standards and allow only certified guidelines to be published in the National Guidelines Clearinghouse. Currently, readers cannot rely on the fact that a guideline is published in the National Guidelines Clearinghouse as evidence of its trustworthiness, as demonstrated by Kung et al. I hope efforts by the Guidelines International Network are successful, but until then, in guidelines we cannot trust.

References

1. IOM: Graham R, Mancher M, Wolman DM,  et al; Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines; Board on Health Care Services.  Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2011 http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13058

2. Kung J, Miller RR, Mackowiak PA. Failure of Clinical Practice Guidelines to Meet Institute of Medicine Standards: Two More Decades of Little, If Any, Progress. Arch Intern Med. 2012 Oct 22:1-6. doi: 10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.56. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 23089902.

3.  Ransohoff DF, Pignone M, Sox HC. How to decide whether a clinical practice guideline is trustworthy. JAMA. 2013 Jan 9;309(2):139-40. doi: 10.1001/jama.2012.156703. PubMed PMID: 23299601.

4. Shaneyfelt TM, Mayo-Smith MF, Rothwangl J. Are guidelines following guidelines? The methodological quality of clinical practice guidelines in the peer-reviewed medical literature. JAMA. 1999 May 26;281(20):1900-5. PubMed PMID: 10349893.

5. Shaneyfelt T. In Guidelines We Cannot Trust: Comment on “Failure of Clinical Practice Guidelines to Meet Institute of Medicine Standards”. Arch Intern Med. 2012 Oct 22:1-2. doi: 10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.335. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 23089851.

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Quickly Finding Reliable Evidence

Status

Quickly Finding Reliable Evidence

Good clinical recommendations for various diagnostic and therapeutic interventions incorporate evidence from reliable published research evidence. Several online evidence-based textbooks are available for clinicians to use to assist them in making healthcare decisions. Large time lags in updating are a common problem for medical textbooks.  Online textbooks offer a solution to these delays.

For readers who plan to create decision support, we strongly recommend DynaMed [full disclosure: we are on the editorial board in an unpaid capacity, though a few years ago we did receive a small gift]. DynaMed is a point-of-care evidence-based medical information database created by Brian S. Alper MD, MSPH, FAAFP. It continues to grow from its current 30,000+ clinical topics that are updated frequently. DynaMed monitors the content of more than 500 medical journals and systematic evidence review databases.  Each item is thoroughly reviewed for clinical relevance and scientific reliability. DynaMed has been compared with several products, including in a new review by McMaster University. The DynaMed website is https://dynamed.ebscohost.com/.

The McMaster University maintains a Premium Literature Service (PLUS) database which is a continuously updated, searchable database of primary studies and systematic reviews. Each article from over 120 high quality clinical journals and evidence summary services is appraised by research staff for methodological quality, and articles that pass basic criteria are assessed by practicing clinicians in the corresponding discipline.  Clinical ratings are based on 7-point scales, where clinical relevance ranges from 1 (“not relevant”) to 7 (“directly and highly relevant”), and newsworthiness ranges from 1 (“not of direct clinical interest”) to 7 (“useful information, most practitioners in my discipline definitely don’t know this).

Investigators from McMaster evaluated four evidence-based textbooks—UpToDate, PIER, DynaMed and Best Practice [Jeffery 12].  For each they determined the proportion of 200 topics which had subsequent articles in PLUS with findings different from those reported in the topics. They also evaluated the number of topics available in each evidence-based textbook compared with the topic coverage in the PLUS database, and the recency of updates for these publications.  A topic was in need of an update if there was at least one newer article in PLUS that provided information that differed from the topic’s recommendations in the textbook.

Results

The proportion of topics with potential for updates was significantly lower for DynaMed than the other three textbooks, which had statistically similar values. For DynaMed topics, updates occurred on average of 170 days prior to the study, while the other textbooks averaged from 427 to 488 days. Of all evidence-based textbooks, DynaMed missed fewer articles reporting benefit or no effect when the direction of findings (beneficial, harmful, no effect) was investigated. The proportion of topics for which there was 1 or more recently published articles found in PLUS with evidence that differed from the textbooks’ treatment recommendations was 23% (95% CI 17 to 29%) for DynaMed, 52% (95% CI 45 to 59%) for UpToDate, 55% (95% CI 48 to 61%) for PIER, and 60% (95% CI 53 to 66%) for Best Practice (?23=65.3, P<.001). The time since the last update for each textbook averaged from 170 days (range 131 to 209) for DynaMed, to 488 days (range 423 to 554) for PIER (P<.001 across all textbooks).

Summary

Healthcare topic coverage varied substantially for leading evidence-informed electronic textbooks, and generally a high proportion of the 200 common topics had potentially out-of-date conclusions and missing information from 1 or more recently published studies. PIER had the least topic coverage, while UpToDate, DynaMed, and Best Practice covered more topics in similar numbers. DynaMed’s timeline for updating was the quickest, and it had by far the least number of articles that needed to be updated, indicating that quality was not sacrificed for speed.

Note: All textbooks have access to the PLUS database to facilitate updates, and also use other sources for updates such as clinical practice guidelines.

Conclusion

The proportion of topics with potentially outdated treatment recommendations in on-line evidence-based textbooks varies substantially.

Reference

Jeffery R, Navarro T, Lokker C, Haynes RB, Wilczynski NL, Farjou G. How current are leading evidence-based medical textbooks? An analytic survey of four online textbooks. J Med Internet Res. 2012 Dec 10;14(6):e175. doi: 10.2196/jmir.2105. PubMed PMID: 23220465.

 

 

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