Clinical practice guidelines for fertility preservation in young women undergoing gonadotoxic treatment: an overview and critical appraisal of methodological quality and content

Abstract Research question What is the methodological quality and content of internationally available clinical practice guidelines (CPG) on fertility preservation (FP) care in adult women? Design Internationally available CPG on FP care in adult women were identified after conducting an extensive literature search and consulting (inter)national key experts. The methodological quality of the CPG was appraised by an (inter)national panel of experts using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II instrument. The content of the best CPG, scoring ≥60% for the domain ‘Rigour of development' of the AGREE II instrument, was extracted and categorized according to their topic. Results Thirty of the 1808 documents found were included. After consulting (inter)national key experts, 30 CPG were included, six of which scored ≥60% for their ‘Rigour of development'. The number of FP-related topics discussed by these six CPG ranged from 4 to 12. The number of recommendations provided by the CPG on these topics varied. The number of topics to which ≥5 recommendations were dedicated ranged from 0 to 4 between CPG. Conclusion CPG on the subject of FP care are available, but there is room for improvement in quality and content. Although written for use in daily practice, the CPG can also be used to develop quality indicators to monitor the quality of current FP care or to evaluate future improvement initiatives.