Quality of Evidence and Strength of Recommendations of Clinical Practice Guidelines of Rehabilitation Based on GRADE / 中国康复理论与实践

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the results of Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) for clinical practice guidelines of rehabilitation. Methods:Clinical practice guidelines of rehabilitation were systematically retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE, CNKI, China Biology Medicine disc, Wanfang database and the guideline-related websites until January 11, 2020. Two researchers independently screened guidelines using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE), and extracted and analyzed the results. Results:A total of 83 clinical practice guidelines of rehabilitation were included, in which 46 (55.4%) applied grading systems. Only four (4.8%) guidelines applied GRADE, including 44 recommendations, in which 39 guidelines (88.6%) had quality of evidence. Among the evidences citied in the recommendations, low quality evidences were the most (34.1%); among the recommendations, weak recommendations were more (56.8%). The quality of strong recommendation supporting evidence was higher than that of weak recommendation (χ2 = 8.218,P < 0.05). Conclusion:The application of the GRADE grading system in clinical practice guidelines of rehabilitation remains to be improved. It is proposed for guideline makers to further implement the methodology of guidelines and GRADE to improve the reliability and applicability of the clinical practice guidelines of rehabilitation more effectively.