Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), or simply guidelines, are recommendations on how to diagnose and treat a medical condition. They are written by medical experts with the support of patient’s representatives, and are directed to doctors, but also nurses or any other health care professionals.
A guideline summarizes the current medical knowledge on a given disease, weights the benefits and harms of diagnostic procedures and treatments, and give specific recommendations based on this information.
Guidelines being a major clinical tool, it is crucial that they are trustworthy. The ERN-ITHACA Guidelines wokgroup is thus working on assessing the methodological quality of existing guidelines on rare diseases.
Publications that the workgroup evaluates as methodologically reliable are endorsed by the ERN-ITHACA and published on this webpage.