Process for quality assessment review of societal guidelines—an editorial to accompany “multi-society consensus conference and guideline on the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)”

Background: The SAGES Guidelines Committee has implemented processes for Quality Assessment of SAGES-endorsed guidelines, with the aim of improving the quality of published guidelines. Methods: We provide details of the processes developed, using standardized tools for assessing the methodological quality of practice guidelines. As an example, we describe the application of our processes to the recent multi-societal GERD consensus guideline. Results: Assessment of the multi-societal GERD consensus guideline by the iterative processes of SAGES Quality Assurance taskforce improved the quality of the final manuscript in all domains of appraisal. These processes are easily applicable to future guidelines. Conclusions: Such systems will increase the confidence in SAGES recommendations and increase the implementation of SAGES guidelines. By demonstrating the rigor of Quality Assessment, this confidence also extends to a further increase in the assurance of the publications of the Surgical Endoscopy journal.