| Study characteristics |
| Methods |
To explore to what extent current clinical practice guideline recommendations about use of self‐monitoring blood glucose in patients with diabetes who do not use insulin are based on the principles of evidence‐based medicine. Guidelines published between 1999 and 2011 |
| Data |
18 guidelines |
| Comparisons |
Clinical guidelines with financial conflicts of interest (defined as funding by industry) and clinical guidelines without financial conflicts of interest |
| Outcomes |
Recommendations (classified by a scale of 1‐4: grade 1, strongly against self‐monitoring; grade 2, weekly against self‐monitoring; grade 3, weakly in favour of self‐monitoring; grade 4, strongly in favour of self‐monitoring) |
| Funding source |
The study was funded by the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and no additional funding related to any for‐profit organisation was disclosed |
| Declaration of conflicts of interest |
The authors disclosed no conflicts of interest related to any for‐profit organisation |
| Notes |
|
| Risk of bias |
| Item |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Adequate document inclusion process |
Yes |
Two pairs of authors independently assessed clinical guidelines for inclusion |
| Adequate coding of conflicts of interest |
Yes |
One author extracted data, three authors independently coded each guideline (according to personal correspondence with lead author) |
| Adequate coding of recommendations |
Yes |
Three authors independently coded the recommendations of each guideline |
| Adequate dealing with confounding |
No |
Compared clinical guidelines of different types of self‐monitoring with wide range of publication years (1999‐2011) |
