Abstract

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are defined as ‘systemically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances’.

The main purposes of GPGs are: (i) to improve the quality of patient care and health care outcomes; (ii) to make clinical decisions more transparent; (iii) to promote efficient use of resources; (iv) to provide guidance for involved stakeholders (health professionals, patients, industry, health care providers and policies makers); (v) to support quality control.

The original idea for the creation of the ESMO CPGs came in 1998 and in 1999 the ESMO Guidelines Task Force was constituted. The structure of the ESMO …