With the rapid growth of the number of clinical practice guidelines in China, existing applicability evaluation tools are showing a rapid development trend, and there are generally problems such as the lack of evaluation dimensions and a single target user, which are difficult to suit the urgent needs of guideline applicability evaluation under the coexistence of traditional Chinese and Western medicine medical systems.

To systematically evaluate the applicability evaluation tools of clinical practice guidelines formulated in China and provide references for the correct selection and application of the applicability evaluation tools of guidelines.

We systematically searched Chinese and English databases, including CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, Chinese Medical Journal Full-text Database, PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science, as well as the Clinical Practice Guidelines Scientificity, Transparency, and Applicability Rating Tool Platform and the Medlive Guideline Channel, to collect tools applicable to the evaluation of domestic guidelines. The search period was from database inception to April 1, 2024. Two researchers extracted and screened the collected materials according to the corresponding inclusion and exclusion criteria, and then categorized, summarized, and comparatively analyzed the applicability evaluation tools.

5 complete guideline applicability evaluation tools and 3 guideline quality evaluation tools containing applicability evaluation items were included. The target users of the seven tools were all physicians. The appraisal areas of the eight guideline applicability evaluation tools mainly included: basic information, readability, feasibility, acceptability, overall evaluation, and recommendations. The three Chinese medicine evaluation tools reflect the diagnosis and treatment characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine in terms of item settings, but lack of item settings in the fields of availability and acceptability. Universality evaluation tools lack entry settings for personal suggestions.

At present, although there are a large number of applicability evaluation tools for clinical practice guidelines.there are still problems such as a single user group, different evaluation fields, and long update cycles. Users should fully consider the evaluation purpose and field, and select the appropriate applicability evaluation tool of the guideline; the future applicability evaluation tool revision can expand the target user group to patients and guideline developer groups. Therefore, it can ensure the progressiveness and effectiveness of the applicability evaluation tools.