Critical appraisal and systematic review of guidelines for perioperative diabetes management: 2011-2017

To systematically evaluate the quality, consistency and the evidence support of guidelines for perioperative diabetes management.

We retrieved guidelines through systematic search, critically evaluated their quality and compared the recommendations of included guidelines. Five aspects were compared: target level, management of hyper- and hypoglycaemia, frequency of monitoring, management of insulin, and management of oral anti-diabetic drugs (OADs).

Fourteen guidelines met our criteria, and 342 recommendations were extracted, the results of Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE II) evaluation showed that none of the mean score in each domain was higher than 50%. On average, most guidelines had only one domain scored above 50%. Most recommendations (78.9%) did not specify their supporting evidence, 71 (20.8%) were formed using grading criteria, none cited systematic review or meta-analysis. Recommendations were inconsistent across different guidelines.

The existing guidelines about perioperative management of diabetes needs improvement in methodology, as well as the production of evidence with high quality. Evidence-based guidelines are required for the perioperative management of diabetes.