• Carlos Zaror, Naira Figueiredo Deana, Gerardo Espinoza-Espinoza, Yanela Aravena-Rivas, Patricia Muñoz-Millán, Patricia Pineda, Pamela Burdiles, Paula Nahuelhual, Carlos Canelo-Aybar, and Pablo Alonso-Coello.
• Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2022 Jun 1; 28 (3): 404-410.

Rationale, Aims And ObjectivesIn the context of a pandemic, the rapid development of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) is critical. The guideline development process includes prioritization of the guideline topic, questions and health outcomes. This case study describes the application of a new methodology to prioritize questions and rate the importance of health outcomes for a COVID-19 dental guideline.MethodsPanel members rated the topic and the questions' overall importance, using a 9-point scale (1 = least important; 9 = most important). In addition, they rated six criteria if multiple questions received the same overall importance rating: common in practice, uncertainty in practice, variation in practice, new evidence available, cost consequences, not previously addressed. Panellists also rated the importance of each outcome, defined with health outcome descriptors, using a 9-point scale and the utility of health outcomes on a visual analogue scale. The correlation between each criterion and overall question importance was tested by Spearman correlation coefficient.ResultsOf seven topics, four were rated as high priority and three were rated as important, but not of high priority. Thirty-six percent of the questions (18/50) were rated as high priority to address in the guideline and 64% (32/50) were rated as an important question but not of high priority. Of the 11 outcomes, 72.7% were rated as critical for decision making. The mean utility rating was 0.57 (SD 0.32), with a minimum mean rating of 0.16 and a maximum of 0.76 (SD 0.23).ConclusionThis case study demonstrated that this approach provides a rigorous and transparent methodology to conduct the prioritizations of guideline topics, questions and health outcomes.© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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