Diagnosis and management of Guillian Barre Syndrome in children and adolescents

This guideline has been developed by a group of dedicated pediatric neurology consultants volunteering from all over the Egyptian universities across Egypt. It is the result of an initiative held by the Egyptian Health Council, aiming to formulate evidence-based recommendations for clinical practice.

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

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 only national and/or international guidelines

•  Specific range of dates for publication (using Guidelines published or updated in 2015 and later)

•  Selecting peer reviewed publications only

•  Selecting guidelines written in English language

•  Excluding guidelines written by a single author, not on behalf of an organization 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 three members. The panel decided on a cut-off point or ranked the guidelines (any guideline scoring above 50% on the rigor dimension was retained).

The Guideline Development Group (GDG) decided to adapt the Guideline published by the German Speaking Society of Neuropediatrics (GNP) “Diagnosis and Treatment of Guillain Barre Syndrome in Childhood and adolescence: An evidence and Consensus Based guideline- 2020 AND the guideline published by the European Academy of Neurology/Peripheral Nerve Society on the Diagnosis and treatment of Guillain Barre syndrome- 2023.(16,17)