The creation of recommendations is often based on a formal review and analysis of the published literature along with weighing the strength

of the available scientific evidence. In situations where the data are inconclusive or absent, recommendations are often based on consensus expert opinion. Internationally, more than 3,700 clinical practice guidelines from 39 countries are identified within the Guidelines International Network database.[2] In the U.S., there are over 2,300 guidelines registered within the National Guidelines Clearinghouse which is supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).[3] Given the variability in terms of breadth and depth from available clinical practice

guidelines, the U.S. Congress has STI571 mouse identified the importance of establishing rigorous processes for developing trustworthy, consistent, and scientifically valid documents. In turn, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released eight standards for the development of clinical practice guidelines in March 2011.4 Within the framework of the IOM’s recommendations, there has been little systematic review of the body of clinical practice guidelines put forth by various medical societies. Recently, clinical practice guideline catalogs from the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) and all endocrinology guidelines published in North America from 2007-2010 have been examined.[5, 6] The field of hepatology has experienced significant growth in the production of relevant scientific literature over the past few decades. Fulvestrant concentration However, the question of whether clinical practice guidelines have truly evolved with more evidence-based recommendations has not been systematically investigated. Thus, we performed a systematic review of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) clinical practice guidelines issued from January 1998 to August 2012 with the aim of evaluating the evolution of recommendations that have been issued over time. The ultimate goal was to evaluate methodological rigor and quality of reporting

of AASLD guidelines, elucidate possible gaps that limit the use of evidence-based medicine to support certain recommendations within the AASLD guidelines, learn more and to highlight potential opportunities for improvement. All initial published versions of the AASLD practice guidelines for a given topic issued from January 1998 to August 1, 2012 were abstracted for data.[7-23] If available, the current updated versions for each topic was also evaluated.[18, 24-34] Current AASLD guidelines are defined as the most recently published document on a specific topic which is posted on the AASLD website as of August 1, 2012 (http://www.aasld.org). For this investigation, only complete clinical practice guidelines and position papers were evaluated, thus focused updates were not included.

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