Otitis Media with Effusion

- Methods

A comprehensive search for guidelines was undertaken to identify the most relevant guidelines to consider for adaptation.

inclusion/exclusion criteria followed in the search and retrieval of guidelines to be adapted: 

· Selecting only evidence-based guidelines (guideline must include a report on systematic literature searches and explicit links between individual recommendations and their supporting evidence) 

· Selecting only national and/or international guidelines 

· Specific range of dates for publication (using Guidelines published or updated 2015 and later)

· Selecting peer reviewed publications only 

· Selecting guidelines written in English  language 

· Excluding guidelines written by a single author not on behalf of an organization in order to be valid and comprehensive, a guideline ideally requires multidisciplinary input

· Excluding guidelines published without references as the panel needs to know whether a thorough literature review was conducted and whether current evidence was used in the preparation of the recommendations 

The following characteristics of the retrieved guidelines were summarized in a table:

• Developing organisation/authors

• Date of publication, posting, and release

• Country/language of publication

• Date of posting and/or release

• Dates of the search used by the source guideline developers

All retrieved Guidelines were screened and appraised using AGREE II instrument (www.agreetrust.org) by at least two members. the panel decided a cut-off point or rank the guidelines  (any guideline scoring above 50% on the rigour dimension was retained)