Abstract

Introduction Cochrane reviews, recognized as the benchmark for high-quality abstracts, facilitate decision-making in health care by bringing together all available evidence about an intervention. To date, its inclusion in Latin American guidelines is unknown. Objective To evaluate the use of Cochrane reviews in clinical practice guidelines developed at the national level in Latin America. Methods We handsearched official government websites and biomedical databases between October and December 2019, including national government-sponsored clinical practice guidelines with recommendations for both management of health conditions and healthy lifestyle. of the last ten years. Results 408 clinical practice guidelines from ten countries were included. We found that 69.8% of them cited Cochrane reviews in their recommendations and 76.1% of them also used them in their key recommendations. Clinical practice guidelines that did not use Cochrane reviews covered a wide range of topics, for which several Cochrane reviews can be found. Countries using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach were more likely to use Cochrane reviews in a higher percentage of their guidelines (79.4% vs 61.8%; odds ratio: 2.3, 95% confidence interval: 1.5 to 3.7, p = 0.0001). Conclusions More than two thirds of the clinical practice guidelines in Latin America use Cochrane reviews to frame their recommendations. It is necessary to increase the use of Cochrane reviews in the region for the development of clinical practice guidelines.