Continuous surveillance of a pregnancy clinical guideline: an early experience

To date there is no consensus about the optimal strategy for keeping clinical guidelines (CGs) up-to-date. The aims of this study were (1) to develop a continuous surveillance and updating strategy for CGs and (2) to test the strategy in a specific CG.

The main steps were as follows: (1) recruiting members for the CG Updating Working Group, (2) mapping the CG, (3) identifying new evidence from the CG Updating Working Group, (4) designing and running restricted literature searches, (5) reviewing drugs and medical devices alerts, (6) screening and assessing the new evidence, (7) reviewing and, if necessary, modifying clinical questions and recommendations, and (8) updating the CG document.

The Pregnancy CG Updating Working Group consisted of 29 members, including clinicians, patients and caregivers, and clinical guideline methodology experts. We selected 69 clinical questions (123 recommendations) from the "Assistance during pregnancy" section. For the first update cycle (32-month duration), 9710 references were identified. Of these, 318 were pertinent, 289 were relevant, and 55 were classified as potential key references. For the second and third update cycles (6-month duration each), 2160 and 2010 references were retrieved, respectively. The continuous surveillance and updating strategy has not yet been completely implemented.

Further resources are needed in updating the CG field, both for implementing updating strategies and for developing methodological research.