Objectives To evaluate the quality of guidelines on nutrition in liver disease from 2017 to 2019, and to interpret these guidelines so as to provide references for clinical practice.Methods Computer-assisted literature searches in CNKI, VIP, WanFang Data, Medline (Ovid), The Cochrane Library, PubMed and Medlive databases were performed by two reviewers for guidelines on nutrition in liver disease from January 2017 to July 2019. Two reviewers extracted data and assessed the methodological quality of the included guidelines using AGREE II, separately. Meanwhile, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess the degree of consistency.Results Four guidelines were included with 2 from China and 2 from Europe. Their average standardised scores in the 6 domains of scope and purpose, stakeholder involvement, rigour of development, clarity, applicability and independence were 79.17%, 71.53%, 78.13%, 85.42%, 61.98% and 43.75%, respectively. The Chinese and European guidelines had similar recommendations for energy and other nutrients, apart from differences in recommendations for protein intake. The European guidelines considered that restricting protein intake was not beneficial for patients with hepatic encephalopathy, while the Chinese guidelines argued that patients with severe hepatic encephalopathy were required to reduce or limit their protein intake.Conclusions All 4 guidelines are of average quality and are required to be strengthened in the ‘independence’ domain. Currently, the only consensus on nutrition therapy for liver disease and guidelines on nutrition in end-stage liver disease are available for references in China, with lower quality scores than that of the European guidelines. Therefore, the evidence-based guidelines on nutrition in liver disease should be developed by Chinese national conditions as soon as possible to provide references for clinicians, nurses and clinical nutritionists, enableing them to implement nutrition screening, evaluation, nutritional therapy and follow-up management for patrents with liver disease.

Citation： LIU Jing, QIAO Xinyao, SHI Lei, HU Wen. Quality evaluation and comparative interpretation of guidelines on nutrition in liver disease from 2017 to 2019. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2020, 20(9): 1083-1091. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.201907044 Copy