leitlinienwatch.de - ESC/ERS Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary hypertension, engl.

Evaluation by Leitlinienwatch

05.03.16

PTs.	Criterion
2	Transparency European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines outside theGerman AWMF guideline register (http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/ehj/37/1/67.full.pdf). Detailed information regarding potential conflicts of interest for each author is published on the ESC homepage: http://www.escardio.org/static_file/Escardio/Guidelines/Publications/PAH/DOI_Summary_2015_PH.pdf There is no transparent evaluation of conflicts of interest as part of the guideline process.
0	Composition of the Guideline Working Group 17 out of 21 members of the guideline working group declare relevant conflicts of interest.
0	Independence of the Coordinators/Chairs/Lead AuthorsUnabhängigkeit der Vorsitzenden/federführenden Autoren Both lead authors declare relevant conflicts of interest.
0	Abstention from Voting There is no documented rule regarding abstention.
0	External Review of the Guideline An external review via a publicly accessible website was not performed.
1	Bonus Points The guidelines were assessed internally by 35 reviewers, one of whom was a methodologist from the European Respiratory Society. These reviewers also declared their conflicts of interest. How this group was recruited is not documented, however.

Explanations to the evaluation criteria

Overall score

Good! (11-18)

Warning! (6-10)

Needs reform! (0-5)

Comment

The ESC/ESR guidelines on pulmonary hypertension are also highly relevant to Germany, as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kardiologie (Germany Society of Cardiology) references the ESC guidelines. The majority of the guideline authors declare financial conflicts of interest. In most cases, the conflicts of interest are directly connected to costly drug therapies for pulmonary hypertension. When the guidelines are reissued, we would recommend recruiting independent guideline authors. A standard guideline report that would explain rules regarding abstention from voting, study evaluation methods, recruitment of the guideline working group, and the review process is not provided.