title: The appraisal of clinical guidelines in dentistry.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To appraise the reported processes involved in the development of published dental guidelines.
  
  
  METHODS
  Electronic databases were searched to identify guidelines making recommendations for any health professional within dentistry. All included guidelines were appraised using the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) instrument.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 105 guidelines met the inclusion criteria. The appraised guidelines showed lack of rigour in their development (median score 14.3%; range 0% to 100%). Only 10 (9.5%) were coded as 'strongly recommend' by at least two assessors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  If recommendations within clinical guidelines are to be relied upon, the methods used in their development must be explicit and free from bias. When using the AGREE checklist to make decisions on whether or not to implement individual sets of guidelines, the findings of the present assessment reinforce the need for more than two assessors to be included in the appraisal of each set of guidelines.
authors.affiliation: Cochrane Oral Health Group, School of Dentistry, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. a.glenny@manchester.ac.uk
authors.forename: Anne-Marie
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Glenny
authors.forename: Helen V
authors.initials: HV
authors.lastname: Worthington
authors.forename: Jan E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Clarkson
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Esposito
mesh_terms: D057189:Checklist; D003729:Dental Care / Q000592:standards*; D003813:Dentistry / Q000592:standards*; D055094:Evidence-Based Dentistry; D006801:Humans; D015588:Observer Variation; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic