Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Practice Guidelines; Customized for Iranian Population

To adapt the Iranian clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Three DR CPGs (Royal College 2013; American Academy 2012 and Australian Diabetes Society 2008) were chosen from the extracted CPGs in the related databases and websites. Clinical questions about the DR were developed by the customization team. Four tables were used to analyze and summarize the clinical questions. Each clinical question along with its answers and comments was entered in table 1 from the selected CPGs. The evidences of each answer were extracted and recorded in table 2. The recommendations were developed by customization team and evaluated them in terms of clinical benefits, cost and side effects in table 3. In table 4, recommendations have been revised based on its customizing capability (applicability, acceptability, and external validity). Recommendations were sent to the faculty members of Iran medical universities to score the recommendations from 1 to 9.
Customization team were analyzed the scores. The agreed recommendations were served as the final recommendations. Non-agreed ones were modified and totally, 29 customized recommendations were developed.
The Iranian customized CPG for DR might be effective in standardization of referral, diagnosis and treatment of the diabetic patients.