Surgical Guidelines Watch and mapping of EAES members’ preferences
The EAES Guidelines Subcommittee has set transparent principles in the selection of topics addressed by EAES guidelines.
We run an annual systematic review of the literature and major surgical organisations’ websites to identify new guidelines, and we assess their quality using the AGREE II instrument.
We shortlist:
- Topics that other guidelines have not addressed
- Topics that were addressed by guidelines, but they are considered outdated
- Topics that were addressed by guidelines of insufficient quality
Shortlisted topics are presented in the annual online poll of EAES members. Their voting informs the selection of next year’s topics of EAES guidelines
See the results of the latest survey here
AGREE-S: AGREE II Extension for Surgical Interventions
EAES and UEG have funded a tripartite project (Guideline Assessment Project: Filling the GAP in Surgical Guidelines), that led to the development of AGREE-S, an extension of AGREE II for surgical interventions.
AGREE-S consists of a methodological guide, a reporting checklist, and an appraisal instrument for guidelines of surgical interventions.
The project was designed in line with guidance for developers of health research reporting guidelines. A protocol was developed by the steering group and was published in advance.
Details on AGREE-S can be found in the project website: https://agree-s.org
Survey on awareness and use of EAES guidelines
Over the past 25 years, the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery (EAES) has been issuing clinical guidance documents to aid surgical practice. In this project we investigated the awareness and use of such documents among EAES members. We invited members of EAES to participate in a web-based survey on awareness and use of these documents. Post hoc analyses were performed to identify factors associated with poor awareness/use and the reported reasons for limited use.
The project report can be accessed in Surgical Endoscopy.
Conceptual analysis of EAES guidance documents
In this project, we aimed to conceptually appraise the methodology of EAES clinical practice guidance documents. We defined 5 key methodological elements (systematic literature search, interdisciplinary panel, patient involvement, evidence rating, and link between evidence and recommendations) and we documented whether these features were present. We categorized guidance documents according to their features and we aimed to identify distinct phases of development.
We identified 22 documents published between 1994 and 2019. Eight were classified as consensus reports and 14 as guidelines.
Three distinct phases of development were identified:
- Phase 1, the Consensus phase: In the first phase, only consensus reports were developed, usually without systematic review, no interdisciplinary team, elementary evidence rating (based only on study design) and unclear link between evidence and recommendations.
- Phase 2, the Guideline phase: The second phase was characterized by the development of exclusively guideline projects, employing some form of a systematic review, interdisciplinary teams, evidence rating based on study design and additional parameters (consistency of effects, study quality) of the Oxford criteria, and some link between evidence and recommendations.
- Phase 3, the Transitional phase: Both consensus reports and guideline projects were developed in the third phase, with improved reporting of the systematic review process, interdisciplinary panels, evidence rating using the Oxford criteria, several elements of the GRADE methodology in two guidelines and some link between evidence and recommendations.
More details can be found in the project report in Surgical Endoscopy.
