A critical appraisal of chronic kidney disease mineral and bone disorders clinical practice guidelines using the AGREE II instrument.

Background: Patients with chronic kidney disease mineral and bone disorders (CKD-MBD) suffer high rates of morbidity and mortality, in particular related to bone and cardiovascular outcomes. The management of CKD-MBD remains challenging. The objective of this systematic survey is to critically appraise clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) addressing CKD-MBD.

Methods/design: Data sources included MEDLINE, EMBASE, the National Guideline Clearinghouse, Guideline International Network and Turning Research into Practice up to May 2016. Teams of two reviewers, independently and in duplicate, screened titles and abstracts and potentially eligible full text reports to determine eligibility and subsequently appraised the guidelines using the Advancing Guideline Development, Reporting and Evaluation in Health Care instrument II (AGREE).

Results: Sixteen CPGs published from 2003 to 2015 addressing the diagnosis and management of CKD-MBD in adult patients (11 English, two Spanish, one Italian, one Portuguese and one Slovak) proved eligible. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline performed best with respect to AGREE II criteria; only three other CPGs warranted high scores on all domains. All other guidelines received scores of under 60% on one or more domains. Major discrepancies in recommendations were not, however, present, and we found no association between quality of CPGs which was not associated with resulting recommendations.

Conclusions: Most guidelines assessing CKD-MBD suffer from serious shortcomings using AGREE criteria although limitations with respect to AGREE criteria do not necessarily lead to inappropriate recommendations.