Methods for living guidelines: early guidance based on practical experience. Paper 1: Introduction.

Objectives: To introduce methods for living guidelines based on practical experiences by the Australian Living Evidence Consortium (ALEC), the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), with methodological support from the US Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) Network.

Study Design And Setting: Members of ALEC, NICE, and the US GRADE Network, convened a working group to share experiences of the methods used to develop living guidelines and outline the key differences between traditional and living guidelines methods.

Results: The guidance includes the following steps: 1) deciding if the guideline is a priority for a living approach, 2) preparing for living guideline development, 3) literature surveillance and frequency of searching, 4) assessment and synthesis of the evidence, 5) publication and dissemination, and 6) transitioning recommendations out of living mode.

Which actionable statements qualify as good practice statements In Covid-19 guidelines? A systematic appraisal.

Objectives: To evaluate the development and quality of actionable statements that qualify as good practice statements (GPS) reported in COVID-19 guidelines.

Design And Setting: Systematic review . We searched MEDLINE, MedSci, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), databases of Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) Guidelines, NICE, WHO and Guidelines International Network (GIN) from March 2020 to September 2021.

Good or best practice statements: proposal for the operationalisation and implementation of GRADE guidance.

An evidence-based approach is considered the gold standard for health decision-making. Sometimes, a guideline panel might judge the certainty that the desirable effects of an intervention clearly outweigh its undesirable effects as high, but the body of supportive evidence is indirect. In such cases, the application of the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) approach for grading the strength of recommendations is inappropriate.

A taxonomy and framework for identifying and developing actionable statements in guidelines suggests avoiding informal recommendations.

Objective: To propose a taxonomy and framework that identifies and presents actionable statements in guidelines.

Study Design And Setting: We took an iterative approach reviewing case studies of guidelines produced by the World Health Organization and the American Society of Hematology to develop an initial conceptual framework. We then tested it using randomly selected recommendations from published guidelines addressing COVID-19 from different organizations, evaluated its results, and refined it before retesting.

The role of abstinence and activity in the quality of life of drug users engaged in treatment.

There is increasing interest in understanding factors that enhance the quality of life of substance users in treatment, however limited research has been conducted to date. Measures of physical and psychological health, overall quality of life, drug use, and meaningful activity (education, training or employment) were collected at treatment entry and review in two areas of England as part of routine monitoring. Analysis was performed on an initial sample of 10,470 cases in one site and a more targeted assessment of 783 cases (with repeated measures for 528 of these) in the second site.