In the past 20 years, there has been increasing recognition of the need to consider cost in medical decision making. This period has seen an explosion in the number of economic evaluations appearing in the medical literature. Cost-effectiveness analysis is an objective systematic technique for comparing alternative health care strategies on both cost and effectiveness simultaneously. Cost-effec...

OBJECTIVE To determine the accessibility and currency of delirium guidelines, guideline summary papers and evaluation studies, and critically appraise guideline quality. DESIGN Systematic literature search for formal guidelines (in English or French) with focus on delirium assessment and/or management in adults (≥18 years), guideline summary papers and evaluation studies.Full appraisal of del...

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) recently updated clinical practice guidelines on the treatment and prevention of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in patients with cancer. Although several new studies have been reported, many questions remain about the close relationship between VTE and malignant disease. The risk of VTE among patients with cancer continues to increase and is clearl...

BACKGROUND Information overload, increasing time constraints, and inappropriate search strategies complicate the detection of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). The aim of this study was to provide clinicians with recommendations for search strategies to efficiently identify relevant CPGs in SUMSearch and Google Scholar. METHODS We compared the retrieval efficiency (retrieval performance) o...

Background Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are used to standardize care according to evidence-based recommendations. However, the implementation of CPGs in the real world varies; a possible reason for this is the lack of a systematic approach to the implementation of CPG. We, therefore, aimed to develop an intervention to improve the implementation of a local hypertension CPG based on the n...

Theories from social and behavioural science can make an important contribution to the process of developing a conceptual framework for improving use of clinical practice guidelines and clinician performance. A conceptual framework for guideline dissemination and implementation is presented which draws on relevant concepts from diVusion of innovation theory, the transtheoretical model of behavi...

BACKGROUND Outcomes in patients treated with haemodialysis(HD) are potentially influenced by the delivered dose of dialysis. The UK Renal Association publishes clinical practice guidelines recommendations for dialysis dose. The urea reduction ratio (URR) is a widely used measure of dialysis dose and has been historically the measure of adequacy reported by the UKRR. AIM To determine the exten...

BACKGROUND Correct information provided by guidelines may reduce laboratory test related errors during the pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical phase and increase the quality of laboratory results. METHODS Twelve clinical practice guidelines were reviewed regarding inclusion of important laboratory investigations. Based on the results and the authors' experience, two checklists were...