Quality assessment of clinical guidelines in the care of laryngitis and pharyngitis according to AGREE II.
Lucas Mateus Rodrigues Carvalho, Ana Paula de Oliveira Barbosa, Nara Amanda Laismann and 3 others
PMID 39879424WHAT IT FOUND
Most guidelines for sore throat and hoarseness rely on drugs, with less than half recommending voice rest or hydration.
While methodological quality was high, non-pharmacological care is inconsistently addressed across the seven guidelines assessed.
Key findings
01Less than half of the guidelines considered non-pharmacological approaches like voice rest or hydration.
02All seven guidelines were rated as recommended for use, with high scores for clarity and scope but lower scores for stakeholder involvement and editorial independence.
03There was no uniformity in treatment recommendations between the guidelines.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review only included guidelines published in the last 10 years in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. It excluded guidelines on influenza, cold, and tonsillitis, which may overlap with pharyngitis presentations. The AGREE II tool assesses the quality of the guideline development process, not the clinical effectiveness of the treatments recommended within them. Brazilian clinical practice guidelines were excluded due to a lack of precision and confidence in available data.
Declared interests
The paper does not report specific funding sources or conflicts of interest for the authors of this review. However, it notes that editorial independence was the lowest-scoring domain among the guidelines reviewed, indicating poor transparency regarding funding and conflicts of interest in the source documents.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the high AGREE II quality scores as evidence that the recommended treatments are effective. The tool measures how well the guidelines were written and developed, not whether the drugs or therapies they recommend actually work.