A critical appraisal of the quality of low back pain practice guidelines using the AGREE II tool and comparison with previous evaluations: a EuroAIM initiative

To assess the methodologic quality of guidelines for the management of low back pain (LBP) and compare their recommendations.

No ethics committee approval was needed for this systematic review. In March 2017, a systematic search was performed using MEDLINE, EMBASE, National Guideline Clearinghouse, and National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to find practice guidelines of assessment and management of LBP. The evaluation of guidelines quality was performed independently by four authors using the AGREE II tool, and the results were compared with previous appraisals performed in 2004 and 2009.

Of 114 retrieved guidelines, eight were appraised. All except one reached the level of “acceptable” in overall result, with two of them reaching the highest scores. Only two guidelines reached a level of “acceptable” in every domain; the others had at least one domain with low scores. The guidelines had the higher scores (range = 63–94%) on “Scope and purpose” and “Clarity of presentation” (47–89%). “Stakeholder Involvement” has the highest variability between the guidelines results (40–96%). “Rigor of Development” reached an intermediate mean result (34–90%), “Applicability” (42–70%), and “Editorial Independence” (38–85%). Only three guidelines had a radiologist among authors and reached higher scores compared to guidelines without a radiologist among the authors. Compared to previous assessments, low-level guidelines were 53% in 2004, 36% in 2009, and 13% in 2017.

Considering all guidelines, only one had a “low” overall score, while half of them were rated as of “high” quality. Future guidelines might take this into account to improve clinical applicability.