Clinical practice guidelines are able to regulate the clinical behavior of clinicians and provide appropriate suggestions and references for patients. In recent years, the number of clinical practice guidelines in China has been on the rise. However, the quality of the guidelines, especially traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is very uneven. At present, there have been some studies on the application of guideline evaluation tools, but studies on the evaluation of TCM guidelines are scant.

To evaluate the selected TCM clinical practice guidelines using two guideline evaluation tools, and to analyze the important dimensions influencing the quality of TCM clinical practice guidelines.

TCM clinical practice guidelines for common and frequently occurring diseases in the Gastroenterology, Pediatrics, Orthopedics and Gynecology were searched in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, VIP and SinoMed databases from November 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. Two guidelines of each specialty were selected after a negotiation with 2 clinical doctors. Journals that published the guidelines, publishing institutions/groups, tools used for evidence grading and recommendation intensity, number of references, number of authors, number of experts formulated, whether to update the guidelines, the evaluation results of the AGREE-China evaluation, the evaluation results of the list of suggestions for quality evaluation of TCM clinical practice guidelines, and the evaluation time of the guidelines were collected.

Among the 8 guidelines evaluated, 6 guidelines were strongly recommended after the AGREE-China evaluation, and only 3 guidelines had more than half of the reports after the evaluation of the list of suggestions for quality evaluation of TCM clinical practice guidelines. The median time required for AGREE-China evaluation was 22.0 min. The median time required for the list of suggestions for quality evaluation of TCM clinical practice guidelines was 18.8 min.

Although AGREE-China evaluates 6 high-quality guidelines, the tool lacks an evaluation of TCM content and takes a relatively long time. Although the list of suggestions for the quality evaluation of TCM clinical practice guidelines has increased the content of TCM evaluation and shortened the time consuming, only three guideline reports have reached more than half in the number, and the evaluation results are not quantitative and intuitive. Therefore, there are still some inconveniences in clinical use.