Reporting quality of 2014–2018 clinical practice guidelines on diabetes according to the RIGHT checklist

Objective Reporting Items for Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) in HealThcare (RIGHT) checklist was used as a tool to assess the reporting quality of 2014–2018 CPGs on diabetes treatment, aiming to promote the application of RIGHT and improve the reporting quality of future guidelines. Methods We searched Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (CBM), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, VIP database, Medline, Embase, Allied, and Complementary MEdicine Database (AMED), and Medlive and Google Scholar (Google academics), and collected published CPGs on diabetes with published date during 1st January, 2014 and 7th November, 2018. CPGs on diabetes issued since 2014 were included and filtered by two reviewers independently. Then the basic information extraction and RIGHT evaluation of the included CPG are carried out. Results A total of 34 guidelines were included, out of which 7 are for Chinese and 27 for other countries. Overall, basic information (domain 1) got the highest (64.66%) reporting rate, while financing and conflict-of-interest statements and management (domain 6) got the lowest (8.1%). For all guidelines, classification of guidelines (item 1c) was sufficiently reported, and description of the specific sources of funding for all stages of guideline development (item 18a) was not reported. For Chinese CPGs, financing and conflict-of-interest statements and management (domain 6) was most insufficiently reported, and only identification of guideline in the title (item 1a), corresponding information of the developer or author (item 4), description of basic epidemiology (item 5), and subgroup description (item 7b) out of 22 items were better reported than foreign guidelines. Conclusions Overall, the CPGs on diabetes during 2014–2018 adhered to ~41% RIGHT checklist, of which Chinese CPGs adhered less than that of foreign guidelines. It is suggested that the RIGHT reporting checklist should be endorsed and used by CPG developers to ensure higher quality and adequate use of guidelines.