Evidence-based medicine is “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” (Sacket et al., 1996). Evidence-based clinical practice integrates the clinician’s expertise, research evidence, the expertise of the clinician, and the patients’ values when making decisions for the care of the individual patient. Over the past two decades, rheumatology has joined the move towards evidence-based medicine aiming at meeting the needs of the patients living with arthritic conditions.
In the same vein, Egyptian Rheumatology and Rehabilitation (ERAR) has endorsed the publication of evidence-based guidelines/treatment recommendations as the gold standard for clinical practice.
The Clinical, Evidence-based, Guidelines (CEG) initiative launched by the Egyptian Academy of Rheumatology has published a protocol. The activity involves a qualitative synthesis of scientific evidence and consensus, based on the existing scientific evidence and clinical experience. The protocol, which was approved the local ethical committee, adopted the Patient/Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes and Time (PICOT) approach. This was the cornerstone to develop an up-to-date gold standard for consensus, evidence-based, clinical practice guidelines for treatment of rheumatic diseases. These guidelines were tested meticulously by Egyptian expert clinicians.
The high levels of consensus achieved, as well as the agreement with the most recently published treatment recommendations; meanwhile, meeting the Egyptian standards for the available financial resources made this work a trustable and valuable source for patient care in Egypt.