Colorectal cancer treatment guidelines and shared decision making quality and reporting assessment: Systematic review

Introduction: Physicians must share decisions and choose personalised treatments regarding patients´ beliefs and values.

Objective: To analyse the quality of the recommendations about shared decision making (SDM) in colorectal (CRC) and anal cancer treatment clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and consensus statements (CSs).

Methods: Guidelines were systematically reviewed following prospective registration (Prospero: CRD42021286146) without language restrictions searching 15 databases and 59 professional society websites from January 2010 to November 2021. A validated 31-item SDM quality assessment tool was employed to extract data in duplicate.

Results: We identified 134 guidelines. Only 46/134 (34.3 %) mentioned SDM. Fifteen (11.1 %) made clear, precise and actionable recommendations, while 9/134 (6.7 %) indicated the strength of the SDM-related recommendations. CPGs underpinned by systematic reviews reported SDM more often than those based on consensus or reviews (35.9 % vs 32.0 %; p = 0.031). Guidelines that reported following quality tools (i.e., AGREE II) more commonly commented about SDM than when it was not reported (75.0 % vs 32.0 %; p = 0.003).

Conclusion and practice implications: Most of the CRC and anal treatment guidelines did not mention SDM and it was superficial. Guidelines based on systematic reviews and those using quality tools demonstrated better reporting of SDM. Recommendations about SDM in these guidelines merit urgent improvement.