Impact of Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program clinical trials on practice guidelines for high blood pressure management

Knowing the extent to which a clinical trial's findings translate into clinical practice can be challenging. One practical approach to estimating a trial's influence on clinical practice can be achieved by assessing how the trial informed relevant clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). Accordingly, the objectives of this study were to provide an overview of all the clinical trials involving the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) that aimed at informing or resulted in informing the management of high blood pressure and to identify and describe the extent to which these trials informed CPGs for the management of high blood pressure. A total of 26 clinical trials involving the VA CSP were identified. Using bibliographic information, 21 CPGs for the management of hypertension representing over 40 years of treatment recommendations from eight collectives were evaluated to determine how they were informed by trials involving the VA CSP. From 1977 to 2018, 13 of the 26 trials (50.0%) were found to have informed 19 of the 21 CPGs (90.5%) a total of 54 times (mean = 2.6 trial citations per CPG, SD ± 1.8). Clinical trials involving the VA CSP have informed a sizeable proportion of CPGs for the management of high blood pressure over the past 40 years. Because of this impact on the CPGs, these trials are also likely to have had at least moderate influence on clinical practice.