Prevention, Diagnosis and Management of Early and Delayed-onset Ocular Injuries Due to Mustard Gas Exposure; Clinical Practice Guidelines

To develop clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for preventing, diagnosing, treating and follow-up of acute and delayed-onset ocular injuries due to mustard gas.

The related clinical questions were developed by the guideline technical committee for each categories, prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Related websites and databases such as National Institute for Clinical Excellence, PubMed, Cochrane, and National Guidelines Clearinghouse were searched to find the available CPGs and answer the clinical questions consequently. No relevant CPGs were published in the literature, therefore related articles in English and Persian languages were extracted, critically appraised and summarized. The recommendations were developed and revised based on their clinical benefits, costs and customization criteria. These recommendations with their evidence were sent to the experts in this area in Iran and request them to score the recommendations from 1 to 9. The agreement on each recommendation was determined through assessing the given scores.

All experts were agreed on the recommendations. Eventually, 98 recommendations were developed under three four categories including prevention of injury, diagnosis and management of the acute and late‑onset mustard gas ocular injuries.

The recommendations of these CPGs would be useful to prevent the ocular complications of mustard gas and standardize and promote the eye care services for the affected persons.