Adherence to the RIGHT statement in Society of Interventional Radiology guidelines
Authors: Khattab Mostafa , Howard Benjamin , Al-Rifai Shafiq , Torgerson Trevor , Vassar Matt 
Published: February 2021

Context

The Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in Health Care (RIGHT) Statement was developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts to improve reporting quality and transparency in clinical practice guideline development.

Objective

To assess the quality of reporting in clinical practice guidelines put forth by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) and their adherence to the RIGHT statement checklist.

Methods

In March 2018, using the 22 criteria listed in the RIGHT statement, two researchers independently documented adherence to each item for all eligible guidelines listed by the SIR by reading through each guideline and using the RIGHT statement elaboration and explanation document as a guide to determine if each item was appropriately addressed as listed in the checklist. To qualify for inclusion in this study, each guideline must have met the strict definition for a clinical practice guideline as set forth by the National Institute of Health and the Institute of Medicine, meaning they were informed by a systematic review of evidence and intended to direct patient care and physician decisions. Guidelines were excluded if they were identified as consensus statements, position statements, reporting standards, and training standards or guidelines. After exclusion criteria were applied, the two researchers scored each of the remaining clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) using a prespecified abstraction Google form that reflected the RIGHT statement checklist (22 criteria; 35 items inclusive of subset questions). Each item on the abstraction form consisted of a “yes/no” option; each item on the RIGHT checklist was recorded as “yes” if it was included in the guideline and “no” if it was not. Each checklist item was weighed equally. Partial adherence to checklist items was recorded as “no.” Data were extracted into Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation) for statistical analysis.

Results

The initial search results yielded 129 CPGs in the following areas: 13 of the guidelines were in the field of interventional oncology; 16 in neurovascular disorders; five in nonvascular interventions; four in pediatrics; 25 in peripheral, arterial, and aortic disease; one in cardiac; one in portal and mesenteric vascular disease; 37 in practice development and safety; three in spine and musculoskeletal disorders; 14 in venous disease; five in renal failure/hemodialysis; and five in women’s health. Of the 46 guidelines deemed eligible for evaluation by the RIGHT checklist, 12 of the checklist items showed less than 25% adherence and 13 showed more than 75% adherence. Of 35 individual RIGHT statement checklist items, adherence was found for a mean (SD) of 22.9 items (16.3). The median number of items with adherence was 21 (interquartile range, 7.5–38).

Conclusion

The quality of reporting in interventional radiology guidelines is lacking in several key areas, including whether patient preferences were considered, whether costs and resources were considered, the strength of the recommendations, and the certainty of the body of evidence. Poor adherence to the RIGHT statement checklist in these guidelines reveals many areas for improvement in guideline reporting.