Quality Assessment of Clinical Practice Guidelines Developed by Professional Societies in Turkey.
BACKGROUND
Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate healthcare for specific clinical circumstances. There is a limited number of studies on guidelines in Turkey. The quality of Ministry of Health guidelines have formerly been assessed whereas there is no information on the other guidelines developed in the country.


OBJECTIVE
This study aims to assess the quality of CPGs that are developed by professional societies that work for the health sector in Turkey, and compare the findings with international guidelines.


METHODS
Professional societies that work for the health sector were determined by using the data obtained from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined for selecting the CPGs. Guidelines containing recommendations about disease management to the doctors, accessible online, developed within the past 5 years, citing references for recommendations, about the diseases over 1% prevalence according to the "Statistical Yearbook of Turkey 2012" were included in the study. The quality of CPGs were assessed with the AGREE II instrument, which is an internationally recognized tool for this purpose. Four independent reviewers, who did not participate in the development of the selected guidelines and were trained in CPG appraisal, used the AGREE instrument for assessment of the selected guidelines.


RESULTS
47 professional societies were defined which provided access to CPGs in their websites; 3 of them were only open to members so these could not be reached. 8 CPGs from 7 societies were selected from a total of 401 CPGs from 44 societies. The mean scores of the domains of the guidelines which were assessed by the AGREE II tool were;


OBJECTIVE
64%, stakeholder involvement: 37.9%, rigour of development: 35.3%, clarity and presentation: 77.9%, applicability: 49.0% and editorial independence: 46.0%.


CONCLUSIONS
This is the first study in Turkey regarding quality appraisal of guidelines developed by the local professional societies. It adds to the limited amount of information in the literature that comes from Turkey as well as other developing countries.
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Yenimahalle Public Health Center, Ankara, Turkey.
Ilknur
I
Yaşar
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Rabia
R
Kahveci
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Aylin
A
Baydar Artantaş
Department of Kocaeli Peliublic Health Directorate, Health of Child, Adollesence,Woman Reproduction, Koc, Turkey.
Duygu
D
Ayhan Başer
Department of Family Medicine, Konya Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey.
Fatma
F
Gökşin Cihan
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Irfan
I
Şencan
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Mamak Public Health Center, Ankara, Turkey.
Esra Meltem
EM
Koç
Department of Family Medicine, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Adem
A
Özkara
D019937:Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures / Q000592:standards; D019468:Disease Management; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D007802:Language; D005791:Patient Care / Q000592:standards; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012107:Research Design; D012955:Societies, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D014175:Translating; D014421:Turkey