gms | German Medical Science

Background: Owing to the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer´s disease (AD), a growing number of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are being published. However choosing the best recommendations is difficult since it is not possible to be certain of the guideline quality and there are different grading systems to assess the strength of the recommendations.

Objectives: This study aimed to review CPGs for AD using AGREE II for quality assessment and to offer a synthesis of existing recommendations.

Methods: A systematic search was conducted using PubMED, National Guideline Clearinghouse, TripDatabase, NICE UK and GuíaSalud to identify CPGs for the diagnosis and treatment of AD, published between since 2006. Publications addressed to health professionals and using a system for grading recommendations were retrieved for assessment using the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation instrument (AGREE II). The valuation was performed by 3 independent reviewers.

Results: Sixty out of 66 documents were excluded for not meeting the eligibility criteria. Six guidelines were evaluated with the AGREE II instrument and 5 of them were appraised as high quality (>60%), thus included in the review. Important agreement was found across guidelines between identified recommendations.

Discussion: The consistent picture emerged from this SR ensures that professionals are provided with the best-evidence recommendations. This has been a rigorous attempt to synthesize practice recommendations; however this is a novel experience requiring further improvement.

Implications for guideline developers, users: Providing developers with a methodology to perform systematic appraisals of CPGs will help to adequately summarize the current state of knowledge.