Clinical Epidemiology in China series. Paper 4: The reporting and methodological quality of Chinese clinical practice guidelines published between 2014 and 2018: A Systematic Review
Recently, a series of articles from Chinese scholars have been published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, including:
l “Paper 1: Evidence-based medicine in China: an oral history study”.
l “Paper 2: Promoting GRADE at the national level: the experience from China”.
l “Paper 3: The methodological and reporting quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published by China' researchers in English-language is higher than those published in Chinese-language”.
l “Paper 4: The reporting and methodological quality of Chinese clinical practice guidelines published between 2014 and 2018: A systematic review”.
The key findings of the last study (https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(21)00256-0/fulltext) in the series are as follows:
l 573 clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) developed in China between 2014 and 2018.
l Most (n=507, 88.5%) CPGs were published in Chinese, and 508 (88.7%) CPGs were about Western medicine.
l CPGs developed in China over the period 2014~2018 lack sufficient quality, the overall mean scores of the methodological and reporting quality in the Chinese CPGs were 19% and 30%, respectively.
l Both the methodological quality and the reporting quality of CPGs developed in China have improved over time, but are still below the international average.