Advancing Canadian Urological Association guidelines using GRADE

摘要

The arena of clinical practice guidelines has undergone a tremendous evolution over the last 10 years. This is largely based on the increasing recognition that past guidelines have been limited by a number of issues, most importantly, the lack of a formal transparent framework for moving from evidence to recommendations.1 As a result, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), (now renamed the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine) published its report, “Clinical practice guidelines we can trust,” summarizing key criteria for guidelines to be considered “evidence-based.”2 These standards have subsequently been adopted by the National Guidelines Clearing House (NGCH) as a resource for guideline documents that meet minimal methodological standards.3 This has placed considerable pressure on professional organizations, including those in urology, to raise their methodological standards.