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August 23, 2021

The Silent Crisis of Pediatric Clinical Practice Guidelines

Author Affiliations
  • 1Division of General Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 3Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Palo Alto, California
  • 4Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
  • 5Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle, Washington
  • 6University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington
JAMA Pediatr. 2021;175(12):1201-1202. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2435

The number of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) has expanded tremendously over the past few decades, and there have been parallel efforts to standardize their development and ensure their quality. CPGs play an important role in improving the quality and value of health care by synthesizing large amounts of evidence to provide standardized recommendations to health care professionals and patients. When implemented appropriately and updated regularly, CPGs can improve clinical processes and outcomes.1

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1 Comment for this article
Corporate influence must be contrained in the creation of clinical guidelines
David Egilman, MD, MPH | Brown University
Unfortunately this paper omits the most important factor in considering the reliability of guideline - corporate influence.1 This must be addressed in all guidelines.



1. Schott G, Dünnweber C, Mühlbauer B, Niebling W, Pachl H, Ludwig WD. Does the pharmaceutical industry influence guidelines?: two examples from Germany. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2013;110(35-36):575-583. doi:10.3238/arztebl.2013.0575
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: None Reported
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