Evidence-based guidelines in acromegaly: implications on the clinic.

Acromegaly is a rare disease with many challenges in its management. In order to address these challenges, many clinical practice guidelines were recently published. They were based on the literature evidence, aiming at guiding primary care physicians, general endocrinologists and neuroendocrinologists. The majority of these guidelines were developed following the GRADE system that classifies the recommendations according to strength (weak or strong) and quality of the evidence that supports them. In this review, we discuss how the evidence-based guidelines are developed, how to interpret the different strengths of recommendations and discuss the clinical implications of the evidence-based guidelines in acromegaly, pointing its utility and limitations on the diagnosis, management of comorbidities and in the disease treatment.