National clinical practice guidelines for food allergy and anaphylaxis: an international assessment

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice guidelines are important tools to promote evidence-based clinical care, but not all countries have the capacity or infrastructure to develop these in-house. The European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology has recently developed guidelines for the prevention, diagnosis and management of food allergy and the management of anaphylaxis. In order to inform dissemination, adaptation and implementation plans, we sought to identify countries that have/do not have national guidelines for food allergy and anaphylaxis. METHODS: Two reviewers independently searched PubMed to identify countries with guidelines for food allergy and/or anaphylaxis from the inception of this database to December 2016. This was supplemented with a search of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s National Guideline Clearinghouse in order to identify any additional guidelines that may not have been reported in the peer-reviewed literature. Data were descriptively and narratively synthesized. RESULTS: Overall, 5/193 (3%) of countries had at least one guideline for food allergy or anaphylaxis. We found that one (1%) country had a national guideline for the prevention of food allergy, three (2%) countries had a guideline for the diagnosis of food allergy and three (2%) countries had a guideline for the management of food allergy. Three (2%) countries had an anaphylaxis guideline. CONCLUSIONS: This study concludes that the overwhelming majority of countries do not have any national clinical practice guidelines for food allergy or anaphylaxis.