American Academy of Dermatology evidence-based guideline development process: Responding to new challenges and establishing transparency

Guideline Funding and Conflicts of Interest

“…Nor did we identify any empirical studies of intellectual conflict of interest, although this topic has recently been the subject of a number of commentaries and recommendations (17)(18)(19)22). Nor did we identify any empirical studies of intellectual conflict of interest, although this topic has recently been the subject of a number of commentaries and recommendations (17)(18)(19)22).…”

“…An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report has called for adequate firewalls between funders and those developing guidelines (14) and for complete transparency in the process of guideline development (15). Other types of conflict of interest include academic conflicts arising from the competition for research funding as well as conflicts related to clinical revenue streams (e.g., from performing an advanced diagnostic procedure that is under consideration for a recommendation) (17,18). This situation involves individual guideline committee members who have personal financial interests in companies developing or marketing pharmaceutical products under review.…”

Appraisal of guidelines for androgenetic alopecia using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II instrument

“…The highest total score (7) was assigned to the European guidelines, followed by the Asian (6) and Japanese (5) guidelines and the two American (4 and 3 for 2011 and 1996, respectively) guidelines. By browsing the scores of the guidelines in various areas and in total, the four guidelines that were developed during the past 5 years received higher scores than the American guideline from the American Academy of Dermatology that was published 15 years ago.…”

“…High-quality clinical guidelines based on evidence-based medicine can improve the quality of therapy and can lead to better therapeutic outcomes. Therefore, the evaluation of the quality of the guidelines is imperative, and more studies identifying the quality of different clinical guidelines are required [6].…”

Conflict of Interest Reporting in Otolaryngology Clinical Practice Guidelines

“…11 The AAO-HNSF guideline development manual clearly describes how to properly disclose and manage potential COI. However, other select organizations such as the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) 12 and the American College of Chest Physicians (AACP) 13 improve on this by including discrete flowcharts in their own manuals on the process for reporting and managing COI, an inclusion that the AAO-HNSF should consider for the next iteration of the guideline development manual. For organizations without the means to produce an internal CPG development manual, both the IOM report Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust 1 and the Guidelines International Network 14 are excellent starting resources.…”