TY  - JOUR
A1  - Faggion, Clovis Mariano, Jr.
A1  - Apaza, Karol
A1  - Ariza-Fritas, Tania
A1  - Málaga, Lilian
A1  - Giannakopoulos, Nikolaos Nikitas
A1  - Alarcón, Marco Antonio
T1  - Methodological quality of consensus guidelines in implant dentistry
JF  - PLOS One
N2  - Background: Consensus guidelines are useful to improve clinical decision making. Therefore, the methodological evaluation of these guidelines is of paramount importance. Low quality information may guide to inadequate or harmful clinical decisions.
Objective: To evaluate the methodological quality of consensus guidelines published in implant dentistry using a validated methodological instrument.
Methods: The six implant dentistry journals with impact factors were scrutinised for consensus guidelines related to implant dentistry. Two assessors independently selected consensus guidelines, and four assessors independently evaluated their methodological quality using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation (AGREE) II instrument. Disagreements in the selection and evaluation of guidelines were resolved by consensus. First, the consensus guidelines were analysed alone. Then, systematic reviews conducted to support the guidelines were included in the analysis. Non-parametric statistics for dependent variables (Wilcoxon signed rank test) was used to compare both groups.
Results: Of 258 initially retrieved articles, 27 consensus guidelines were selected. Median scores in four domains (applicability, rigour of development, stakeholder involvement, and editorial independence), expressed as percentages of maximum possible domain scores, were below 50% (median, 26%, 30.70%, 41.70%, and 41.70%, respectively). The consensus guidelines and consensus guidelines + systematic reviews data sets could be compared for 19 guidelines, and the results showed significant improvements in all domain scores (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: Methodological improvement of consensus guidelines published in major implant dentistry journals is needed. The findings of the present study may help researchers to better develop consensus guidelines in implant dentistry, which will improve the quality and trust of information needed to make proper clinical decisions.
KW  - Medical implants
KW  - Dentistry
KW  - Systematic reviews
KW  - Medical journals
KW  - Treatment guidelines
KW  - Osseointegration
KW  - Osteology
KW  - Database searching
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-180987
VL  - 12
IS  - 1
ER  -