Published 11 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2474
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2474

Letters

Obesity in children

Quality of guidelines on obesity in children is worrying

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Kipping and colleagues argue that the differences between international guidelines on managing obesity reflect variations in the structure of health services, resources, culture, and behaviour between countries.1 However, a more worrying explanation is the poor quality of clinical practice guidelines.

We recently conducted a systematic review of 22 guidelines for preventing and treating obesity and overweight in childhood,2 assessing quality with the AGREE instrument.3 Their quality generally low. Only two of the six domains included in the AGREE instrument (scope and purpose and clarity of presentation) had a mean score over 50%. Although half of the guidelines had a quick reference guide or summary to identify key recommendations, only four had specific guidance for patients.

Of most concern was the low score (just over 35%) obtained in the rigour of development domain, indicating that many of the recommendations were based on unsound grounds and far from an evidence based approach. . . . [Full text of this article]

Pablo Alonso-Coello, researcher1, on behalf of Mario Delgado-Noguera, Sera Tort, Ignasi Gich, and Xavier Bonfill

1 Iberoamerican Cochrane Centre, Hospital Sant Pau (CIBERESP), Barcelona 08041, Spain

palonso@santpau.cat


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Obesity in children. Part 2: Prevention and management
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