The RIGHT Extension Statement for Traditional Chinese Medicine: Development, Recommendations, and Explanation
Runsheng Xie, Yun Xia, Yaolong Chen, Hui Li, Hongcai Shang, Xinying Kuang, Linjun Xia, Yi Guo
Abstract
Nowadays, the number of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) guidelines is constantly increasing, but its reporting quality remains unsatisfactory. One of the main reasons is that there is a lack of suitable reporting standard to guide it. In response to this long-standing problem, the Reporting Items for practice Guidelines in HealThcare (RIGHT) Working Group has invited a group of TCM clinical experts, methodologists and epidemiology, and developed the RIGHT Extension Statement for TCM (RIGHT-TCM) through a multi-staged development process, including systematic review, reporting quality evaluation and online Delphi expert consensus. The RIGHT-TCM extends two sections of the RIGHT Statement, includes basic information and recommendations section. Seven strong recommendation sub-items were added to RIGHT Statement and formed the final RIGHT-TCM. The group hopes that the RIGHT-TCM may assist TCM guideline developers in reporting guidelines, support journal editors and peer reviewers when considering TCM guideline reports, and help health care practitioners understand and implement a TCM guideline. This article will introduce its background, development, recommendations and explanation.