ArticleBMC medical ethics2018
Management of financial conflicts of interests in clinical practice guidelines in Germany: results from the public database GuidelineWatch.
Article in BMC medical ethics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Colorectal Cancer Screening Guidelines Are Primarily Based on Low-Moderate-Quality Evidence.Digestive diseases and sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Conflicts of interest in clinical guidelines, advisory committee reports, opinion pieces, and narrative reviews: associations with recommendations.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Medical guidelines must not be influenced by commercial interests.United European gastroenterology journal · 2023Article
- Transparency of clinical practice guideline funding: a cross-sectional analysis of the German AWMF registry.BMC medical ethics · 2023Article
- PROTOCOL: Conflict of interest issues when engaging stakeholders in health and healthcare guideline development: a systematic review.Campbell systematic reviews · 2022Article
- Awareness and Perceptions among Members of a Japanese Cancer Patient Advocacy Group Concerning the Financial Relationships between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Physicians.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Self-reported Financial Conflict of Interest in Nephrology Clinical Practice Guidelines.Kidney international reports · 2021Article
- Evaluation of Pharmaceutical Company Payments and Conflict of Interest Disclosures Among Oncology Clinical Practice Guideline Authors in Japan.JAMA network open · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe reliability of clinical practice guidelines has been disputed because guideline panel members are often burdened with financial conflicts of interest (COI). Current recommendations for COI regulation advise not only detailed declaration but also active management of conflicts. To continuously assess COI declaration and management in German guidelines we established the public database LeitlinienWatch (GuidelineWatch).
methodsWe analyzed all German guidelines at the highest methodological level (S3) that included recommendations for pharmacological therapy (n = 67) according to five criteria: declaration and assessment of COI, composition of the guideline development group, independence of the coordinators and lead authors, imposed abstentions because of COI and public external review. Each criterion was assessed using predefined outcome categories.
resultsMost guidelines (76%) contained a detailed declaration of COI. However, none of the guidelines provided full transparency of COI assessment results. The guideline group was composed of a majority of participants with COI in 55% of the guidelines, no guideline was free of participants with COI. Only 9% of guidelines had coordinators and lead authors without any financial COI. Most guidelines (70%) did not provide a rule for abstentions for participants with COI. In 21% of guidelines there was a rule, but abstentions were either not practiced or not documented, whereas in 7% partial abstentions and in 2% complete abstentions were documented. Two thirds of the guideline drafts (67%) were not externally reviewed via a public website.
conclusionsCOI are usually documented in detail in German guidelines of the highest methodological level. However, considerable improvement is needed regarding active management of COI, including recruitment of independent experts for guideline projects, abstention from voting for participants with COI and external review of the guideline draft. We assume that the publicly available ratings on GuidelineWatch will improve the handling of conflicts of interest in guideline development.
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