Guidelines on diabetes, pre-diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases: full text

Guidelines and Expert Consensus documents aim to present management and recommendations based on all of the relevant evidence on a particular subject in order to help physicians to select the best possible management strategies for the individual patient, suffering from a specific condition, taking into account not only the impact on outcome, but also the risk–benefit ratio of a particular diagnostic or therapeutic procedure. Numerous studies have demonstrated that patient outcomes improve when evidence-based guideline recommendations are applied in clinical practice. A great number of Guidelines and Expert Consensus Documents have been issued in recent years by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and also by other organizations or related societies. The profusion of documents can question the authority and credibility of guidelines, particularly if discrepancies appear between different documents on the same issue leading to confusion for practising physicians. In order to avoid these pitfalls, the ESC and other organizations have issued recommendations for formulating and issuing Guidelines and Expert Consensus Documents. The ESC recommendations for guidelines production can be found on the ESC website. It is beyond the scope of this preamble to recall all, but the basic rules. In brief, the ESC appoints experts in the field to carry out a comprehensive review of the literature, with a view to making a critical evaluation of the use of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, and assessing the risk–benefit ratio of the therapies recommended for management and/or prevention of a given condition. Estimates of expected health outcomes are included, where data exists. The strength of evidence for or against particular procedures or treatments is weighed, according to predefined scales for grading recommendations and levels of evidence, as outlined below. The Task Force members of the writing panels, as well as the document reviewers, are asked to provide disclosure statements of …