the Management of Hiatus Hernia

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 2013 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:

·  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 (any guideline scoring above 50% on the rigor dimension was retained). The GDG decided to adapt the Guidelines for the management of hiatal hernia, (2013).