diabetic retinopathy and maculopathy management

- Methods

A comprehensive search for guidelines was undertaken to identify the most relevant guidelines to consider for adaptation. 

The inclusion/exclusion criteria followed in the search and retrieval of guidelines to be adapted:  

•  Selecting only evidence-based guidelines (guideline must include a report on systematic literature searches and explicit links between individual recommendations and their supporting evidence)  

•  Selecting peer reviewed publications only  

•   Selecting guidelines written in English language  

•  Excluding guidelines written by a single author not on behalf of an organization in order to be valid and comprehensive, a guideline ideally requires multidisciplinary input  

•  Excluding guidelines published without references as the panel needs to know whether a thorough literature review was conducted and whether current evidence was used in the preparation of the recommendations  

The following characteristics of the retrieved guidelines were summarized in a table:  

•  Developing organization/authors  

•    Date of publication, posting, and release  

•   Country/language of publication  

•   Date of posting and/or release  

•   Dates of the search used by the source guideline developers

All retrieved Guidelines were screened and appraised using AGREE II instrument (www.agreetrust.org) by at least two members. the panel decided a cut-off point or rank the guidelines  (any guideline scoring above 50% on the rigour dimension was retained). This guideline was adapted from the Indian, Iranian guidelines and preferred practice in the American ophthalmological society as well as the royal college of ophthalmology [15-18].