2023 UPDATE – Canadian Urological Association guideline: Management of cystic renal lesions

Abstract

Prior to original Publication (March 2017), this guideline underwent review by the cua guidelines coMMittee, cua MeMbers at large, and the cua executive board. the 2023 uPdates were aPProved by the cua guidelines coMMittee and cua executive board. SUMMARY OF CHANGESThe current guideline summarizes the state-of-the-art knowledge on the management of cystic renal lesions by updating the 2017 Canadian Urological Association (CUA) guideline on the topic. To do so, we updated our search strategy on June 18, 2022, and have identified 38 relevant articles, which led to a revision of the content of the original publication.The panel formulated several recommendations using the GRADE evidence to decision framework -a methodological improvement compared to the previous iteration.Three key recommendation changes were made compared to the previous iteration:1. Patients with a renal cyst should be classified as per the v2019 Bosniak classification.

Evaluating the Certainty of Evidence in Evidence-based Medicine

“…Among the urology-relevant guidelines, GRADE is used to rate the CoE in the American Urological Association guidelines with the modification that the ''low'' and ''very low'' categories have been collapsed. GRADE is also used in selected European Association of Urology [4,5] and Canadian Urological Association [6] guidelines. In the following, we describe the GRADE process for assessing the CoE, as depicted in Figure 1.…”