Assessment of early goal-directed therapy guideline adherence: Balancing clinical importance and feasibility

Assessing adherence to Early goal-directed therapy (EGDT) is challenging and might account for the negative findings and generalisability of the major trials to a real-life setting. This study was aimed (1) to extract key components of pediatric EGDT guidelines potentially becoming adherence criteria; (2) to classify adherence criteria into complete, clinically important, and feasible; and (3) to compare percent adherence to selected guidelines using the three approaches.

This study started with review of existing evidence to extract key components of pediatric EGDT guidelines. Modified Delphi method was then conducted in two rounds among national experts to identify feasible and/or clinically important criteria. Data from the national prospective multicenter study "Clinical Effectiveness of the Utilization of Bundled Care for Severe Sepsis and Septicemia Children" at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (KCMH) during 1 June 2012 and 28 February 2014 was used to compare percentage of adherence across the three approaches.

Of 28 components extracted from the review, 10 were identified by the national experts through the Modified Delphi as feasible whereas 8 were identified as clinically important. Thirty-one severe sepsis patients (48.39% male, median age 3.4 years) were reviewed. Sepsis mortality was 9.7%, a significant reduction from 19% and 42% in 2010 and 2007, respectively. Based on the complete adherence criteria, the percent adherence varied from 60.71% to 89.29% (overall mean 76.84%), with lower adherence in the dead than the survived cases (73.81% vs 77.17%; p = 0.55). The percent adherence varied by criteria used: 69.35%, 76.84%, and 84.52% for clinical importance, complete, and feasibility criteria, respectively.

Adherence determination based on selected clinical importance alone might result in an incorrectly estimated clinical benefit of EGDT guidelines, especially in a resource-limited setting. Both clinical importance and feasibility should be integrated into the development of adherence assessment criteria.