Book
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].