Abstract

FLOREZ GOMEZ, Iván Darío  and  MONTOYA, Diana Carolina. Clinical Practice Guidelines and the AGREE II Instrument. rev.colomb.psiquiatr. [online]. 2011, vol.40, n.3, pp.563-576. ISSN 0034-7450.

Introduction: Evidence-based medicine emerges from the need to find enough evidence to support medical practices. It makes these practices stronger and more reliable than solely relying on the experience of the experts. Clinical practice guidelines (CPG) are created from evidence based medicine. These are documents intended to develop strong and valid recommendations from different approaches in order to assist in the making of medical decisions. The AGREE II instrument was created to evaluate the quality of these guidelines. Methods: Analysis of the literature related to the CPG and brief description of the method of critical appraisal of guidelines by the AGREE II instrument. Results: There are countless varieties of CPG describing one particular condition. There are also many guidelines of poor quality, containing misleading information with many biases, and with erroneous recommendations. In order to improve CPG quality the AGREE instrument and its new version AGREE II, are the most accepted ways to evaluate medical guidelines. They consist of 23 items grouped into 6 different domains. The AGREE instrument evaluates assessments and objectives, participation of different groups related to the guideline, the clarity and applicability of the CPG, the medical staff participation, and the editorial independence. Conclusions: AGREE II can be used by doctors, health policy makers, publishers of medical journals, and medical students among others. This allows people who are not experts in any scientific methodology to more easily detail critical evaluations of any CPG before deciding on their usefulness and applicability.

Keywords : Practice guideline; evidence-based medicine; mental health.

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