Quality assessment and comparative analysis on the recommendations of current guidelines on the management of peripheral arterial disease: a systematic review protocol

INTRODUCTION: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is the third leading atherosclerotic arterial disease. There is evidence that there is a high variation in the quality and recommendations of clinical practice guidelines for PAD, leading to the possibility of confusion among clinicians and patients. This study aims to conduct a quality assessment and comparative analysis of the clinical practice guidelines on PAD written between 2010 and 2020. METHOD AND ANALYSIS: We aim to perform a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines written between 2010 and 2020. A search for guidelines will be conducted through medical databases Scope, Pubmed, TRIP, Guideline Clearinghouses and specialist international organisations’ specific websites. Guidelines that meet the inclusion criteria will be extracted from the search result. The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE-II instrument) will assess the quality of the selected guidelines. The recommendations, level of evidence and other relevant information will be extracted in a datasheet for qualitative analysis. The score for each guideline’s quality will be represented using charts and central tendency measures for comparison. The summary of recommendations will also be represented in tables for easy comparison for similarities and variations across sections. Finally, the level of evidence on which the recommendations are based will also be noted along with other significant characteristics such as the authors’ financial relationship to the biomedical community. We aim to point out deficiencies present in current guidelines and elucidate areas where recommendations are made with low-level evidence. The results will enable the scientific community to design future research to fill in PAD management knowledge gaps. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: No ethical approval was sought. Dissemination will be via journal articles and conference presentations. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020219176.