BACKGROUND: Despite the increased emphasis on evidence-based medicine, the current state of evidence behind ophthalmology clinical practice guidelines is unknown. The purpose of this systematic analysis was to understand the levels of evidence (LOE) supporting American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Preferred Practice Pattern (PPP) guidelines, assess changes over time, and compare LOE across ophthalmology subspecialties.
METHODS: All current PPP guidelines and their immediate predecessors were comprehensively reviewed to identify all recommendations with LOE provided (I [randomized controlled trials], II [case-control or cohort studies], and III [nonanalytic studies]).
RESULTS: Twenty-three out of 24 current PPPs had a prior edition. Among the PPPs with a prior edition, the number of recommendations with LOE decreased from 1254 in prior PPPs to 94 in current PPPs. The number of recommendations with LOE I decreased from 114 to 83, LOE II decreased from 147 to 2, and LOE III decreased from 993 to 9. However, the proportion of LOE I recommendations increased from 9 to 88%, driven by a disproportionate decrease in reporting of evidence lower than LOE I. Subgroup analysis by subspecialty showed similar trends (LOE I recommendations in prior PPPs vs current PPPs: retina: 57 [12%] vs 19 [100%]; cornea: 33 [5%] vs 24 [100%]; glaucoma: 9 [23%] vs 17 [100%]; cataract: 13 [17%] vs 18 [100%]).
CONCLUSIONS: Trends in LOE reporting in PPP guidelines indicate an increasing emphasis on evidence from randomized controlled trials from 2012 to 2021. The decline in the number of recommendations with LOE reported suggests an area for improvement in future guidelines as the presence of LOE is crucial to facilitate interpretation of clinical practice guidelines.

Quality measures (QMs) are tools that help measure or quantify health care processes, outcomes, patient perceptions, and organizational structures and systems associated with the ability to provide high-quality health care. QMs are often developed from clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), as they summarize the best available evidence to create standards for optimizing patient care. The authors provide a framework for learners to understand the relevance, development, and testing of QMs in rheumatology, touching on their relationship to CPGs and appropriate use criteria. They describe measure implementation across different health care settings and reflect on challenges and opportunities associated with this process.

Although guidelines recommend some of the most expensive diagnostic methods and therapies, some patients do have the opportunity to use them, but some others have overused or misused such methods. The cost of cancer care is increasing, but the satisfaction levels of patients and healthcare workers have not increased in line with this rise. Value-based care for cancer, especially breast cancer, should be implemented. For this reason, all unnecessary screening, tests, treatments, and follow-up parameters should be avoided.

The American College of Radiology develops evidence-based practice guidelines to aid appropriate utilization of radiological procedures. Panel members use expert opinion to weight trade-offs and consensus methods to rate appropriateness of imaging tests. These ratings include an equivocal range, assigned when there is disagreement about a technology\'s appropriateness and the evidence base is weak or for special circumstances. It is not clear how expert consensus merges with the evidence base to arrive at an equivocal rating. Quantitative benefit-risk assessment (QBRA) methods may assist decision makers in this capacity. However, many methods exist and it is not clear which methods are best suited for this application. We perform a critical appraisal of QBRA methods and propose several steps that may aid in making transparent areas of weak evidence and barriers to consensus in guideline development. We identify QBRA methods with potential to facilitate decision making in guideline development and build a decision aid for selecting among these methods. This study identified 2 families of QBRA methods suited to guideline development when expert opinion is expected to contribute substantially to decision making. Key steps to deciding among QBRA methods involve identifying specific benefit-risk criteria and developing a state-of-evidence matrix. For equivocal ratings assigned for reasons other than disagreement or weak evidence base, QBRA may not be needed. In the presence of disagreement but the absence of a weak evidence base, multicriteria decision analysis approaches are recommended; and in the presence of weak evidence base and the absence of disagreement, incremental net health benefit alone or combined with multicriteria decision analysis is recommended. Our critical appraisal further extends investigation of the strengths and limitations of select QBRA methods in facilitating diagnostic radiology clinical guideline development. The process of using the decision aid exposes and makes transparent areas of weak evidence and barriers to consensus.

Since the 1980s, when the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) established a joint task force to examine the use of cardiovascular procedures and therapies, cardiologists have been leaders in the development of clinical practice guidelines. The ACC/AHA guidelines development process has evolved considerably over the last 30 or more years. Guidelines now focus on clinical conditions, such as angina, instead of procedures, such as bypass surgery. There is a formal organizational structure, with dedicated staff, a standing committee on practice guidelines, and specific panels of volunteer experts on each topic. This process tightly manages conflicts of interest and strives for evidence-based, as opposed to opinion-based, guidelines, with a clear citation of the supporting evidence. Traditional clinical guidelines consider only what is best for the individual patient, and have explicitly not considered the cost to society. Nevertheless, in many guidelines development meetings, high cost was implicitly considered: if a procedure was extremely costly, the evidence needed to be very strong. The Guidelines Committee recognized that cost considerations ought to be made more transparent, and that the evidence on economic value should be explicitly cited when available. These considerations were formalized by a recent white paper on incorporating economic considerations into ACC/AHA guidelines. In considering value, it is necessary to assess the quality of the evidence as well as to define levels of value. The next ACC/AHA guideline will incorporate value as a part of its recommendations. This will be an evidence-based process in which published economic assessments relating to key questions will be reviewed.

Given recent developments in the United States, where professional clinical societies have attempted to define \"value\" and consider it in their deliberations about appropriate care, this thematic article describes those recent specialty society efforts in the United States in cardiology and oncology and the multispecialty efforts in the United Kingdom for over 10 years. Despite our high levels of health spending, and our field\'s long and consistent approach to the basic tools of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), US private and public payers are not routinely or explicitly using CEAs in their reimbursement decisions. This is a puzzle that raises the following question: Why does the United States have so many skilled pharmacoeconomic practitioners and produce so many CEAs given this apparent lack of interest and trust? There are multiple reasons, but the lack of incentives to use the information certainly matters. This article identifies and discusses a number of key issues and challenges for incorporating CEA into US clinical guidelines development: potential bias in manufacturer-sponsored CEAs, the role of societal perspective, payer-subscriber and physician-patient agency relationships, the need for disease area CEA studies and modeling, patient heterogeneity, investigators\' conflicts of interest, assessing the quality of economic studies, and aggregation of information using multicriteria decision analysis. These developments suggest that the application of CEA in health care decision making in the United States is evolving and may be approaching a tipping point. With increasing pressures on drug prices, perhaps reflecting challenges to industry sustainability, payers, providers, and patients are looking for value for money. CEA should be an important part of this process.