Abstract
Clinical practice guidelines are statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care based on a systematic review of the evidence assessing the benefits and harm of alternative care options. Guideline developers should use an explicit, judicious, and transparent methodology to make trustworthy guidelines. Although there are a variety of frameworks that can help translate enormous medical knowledge into recommendations, the most widely adopted tool for grading the quality of evidence and making recommendations is GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations). This article is the first translation of a series published in the BMJ with regard to the GRADE Approach for Evidence Based Clinical Practice Guideline Development to provide informative knowledge for moving from evidence to recommendations to Korean guideline developers.
Go to : 

References
1. Guyatt GH, Oxman AD, Vist GE, Kunz R, Falck-Ytter Y, Alonso-Coello P, et al. GRADE Working Group. GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. BMJ. 2008; 336:924–6.


2. Atkins D, Eccles M, Flottorp S, Guyatt GH, Henry D, Hill S, et al. GRADE Working Group. Systems for grading the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations I: critical appraisal of existing approaches The GRADE Working Group. BMC Health Serv Res. 2004; 4:38.


3. Lacchetti C, Guyatt G. Therapy and validity: surprising results of randomized controlled trials. Guyatt G, Rennie D, editors. editors.Users' guides to the medical literature: a manual for evidencebased clinical practice. Chicago: American Medical Association;2002.
4. American College of Physicians. Guidelines for counseling postmenopausal women about preventive hormone therapy. Ann Intern Med. 1992; 117:1038–41.
5. Humphrey LL, Chan BK, Sox HC. Postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Ann Intern Med. 2002; 137:273–84.


6. Hulley S, Grady D, Bush T, Furberg C, Herrington D, Riggs B, et al. Randomized trial of estrogen plus progestin for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease in postmenopausal women. Heart and Estrogen/progestin Replacement Study (HERS) Research Group. JAMA. 1998; 280:605–13.
7. Rossouw JE, Anderson GL, Prentice RL, LaCroix AZ, Kooperberg C, Stefanick ML, et al. Risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women: principal results from the Women's Health Initiative randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2002; 288:321–33.
8. Echt DS, Liebson PR, Mitchell LB, Peters RW, Obias-Manno D, Barker AH, et al. Mortality and morbidity in patients receiving encainide, flecainide, or placebo. The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial. N Engl J Med. 1991; 324:781–8.
Go to : 

Table 1.
Advantages of GRADE over other systems
Table 2.
Quality of evidence and definitions
Table 3.
Factors that affect the strength of a recommendation