Durability of Class I American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Clinical Practice Guideline Recommendations
Guidelines Monday, June 9th, 2014JAMA: 5/28/14
Importance Little is known regarding the durability of clinical practice guideline recommendations over time.
Objective To characterize variations in the durability of class I (“procedure/treatment should be performed/administered”) American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guideline recommendations.
Design, Setting, and Participants Textual analysis by 4 independent reviewers of 11 guidelines published between 1998 and 2007 and revised between 2006 and 2013.
Main Outcomes and Measures We abstracted all class I recommendations from the first of the 2 most recent versions of each guideline and identified corresponding recommendations in the subsequent version. We classified recommendations replaced by less determinate or contrary recommendations as having been downgraded or reversed; we classified recommendations for which no corresponding item could be identified as having been omitted. We tested for differences in the durability of recommendations according to guideline topic and underlying level of evidence using bivariable hypothesis tests and conditional logistic regression. Read more
