A critical appraisal of the North American Spine Society guidelines with the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II instrument.

Background Context: The North American Spine Society (NASS) publishes clinical guidelines that are taken into consideration worldwide by clinicians who have a special interest in spinal surgery. The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II is the second version of the original AGREE instrument to assess the quality of guidelines in terms of development process. This appraisal aims to evaluate each individual NASS guideline using AGREE II tool to demonstrate its methodologic robust and weakness.

Purpose: To evaluate the quality of the clinical practice guidelines published by the NASS.

Study Design: Four appraisers used the AGREE II guideline evaluation instrument to evaluate the NASS guidelines.

Methods: All six guidelines available on the NASS web site as of July 1, 2014 were evaluated. Four reviewers independently assessed these guidelines using the AGREE II instrument. The instrument standardizes the quantitative assessment of quality for a guideline's development process across six domains that include: scope and purpose, stakeholder involvement, rigor of development, clarity and presentation, applicability, and editorial independence. Additionally, each reviewer rated the overall quality of the guidelines.

Results: Overall results for the AGREE II domains across all six guidelines were: scope and purpose (median score, 94.4%), stakeholder involvement (median score, 56.9%), rigor of development (median score, 91.7%), clarity of presentation (median score, 94.4%), applicability (median score, 60.9%), and editorial independence (median score, 71.9%).

Conclusions: Our study showed that the quality of the NASS guidelines needs some improvement. There is a critical need for broader stakeholder involvement including patient representatives and health economists. Consideration of resource implications and monitoring process and standardization of how recommendations are implemented need to be improved. Studies analyzing facilitators and barriers would be helpful for future NASS guidelines.