General description
We included 86 CPGs in our analysis. Table 1 summarizes the guideline characteristics. Thirty-four (39.5%) were published in 2015, 54 (62.8%) de novo guidelines, 79 (91.9%) provided therapeutic recommendations and 45 (52.3%) focus on specific diseases.
Table 2 summarizes the guideline development process. Librarian involvement was present in 32 CPGs (37.2%), international guidelines were included in 66 CPGs (76.7%), Cochrane SR in 36 CPGs (41.9%) and non-Cochrane SR in 59 CPGs (68.6%); no critical appraisal was reported. Several of the guidelines used more than one evidence grading system in the same document to provide their recommendations (48.8%). The systems implemented were the approaches by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (42, 48.8%), Shekelle (27, 31.4%), GRADE (25, 29.1%), the Scottish International Guideline Network (SIGN) (19, 22.1%) and by the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (OCEBM) (18, 20.9%) (figure 1). The authors used the NICE and SIGN approaches that had no adopted the GRADE framework.