title: Clinical Practice Guideline Development Manual, Third Edition: a quality-driven approach for translating evidence into action.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Guidelines translate best evidence into best practice. A well-crafted guideline promotes quality by reducing health care variations, improving diagnostic accuracy, promoting effective therapy, and discouraging ineffective-or potentially harmful-interventions. Despite a plethora of published guidelines, methodology is often poorly defined and varies greatly within and among organizations.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The third edition of this manual describes the principles and practices used successfully by the American Academy of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery Foundation to produce quality-driven, evidence-based guidelines using efficient and transparent methodology for actionable recommendations with multidisciplinary applicability. The development process emphasizes a logical sequence of key action statements supported by amplifying text, action statement profiles, and recommendation grades linking action to evidence. New material in this edition includes standards for trustworthy guidelines, updated classification of evidence levels, increased patient and public involvement, assessing confidence in the evidence, documenting differences of opinion, expanded discussion of conflict of interest, and use of computerized decision support for crafting actionable recommendations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As clinical practice guidelines become more prominent as a key metric of quality health care, organizations must develop efficient production strategies that balance rigor and pragmatism. Equally important, clinicians must become savvy in understanding what guidelines are--and are not--and how they are best used to improve care. The information in this manual should help clinicians and organizations achieve these goals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, State University of New York Downstate, Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York 11201, USA. richrosenfeld@msn.com
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Rosenfeld
authors.forename: Richard N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Shiffman
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Robertson
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D008370:Manuals as Topic; D010036:Otolaryngology / Q000592:standards*; D010038:Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000601:surgery*; D013517:Otorhinolaryngologic Surgical Procedures / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012955:Societies, Medical; D014481:United States