In the process of formulation, traditional Chinese medicine clinical practice guidelines are often faced with the dilemma of lack of evidence. Guidelines development groups tend to make final decisions based on expert experience or expert opinion, but the limitations of cognitive bias reduce the credibility and transparency of the guidelines. By clarifying the difference between the expert experience and expert opinion and expert evidence, the expert evidence of traditional Chinese medicine discipline advantages and necessity, providing the recommendation form link using expert evidence methodology design and implementation details, retaining the empirical characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine and improving the lack of evidence, has certain practical application value.
Clinical practice guidelines need to be based on evidence, but traditional Chinese medicine, especially integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine guidelines, inevitably need to combine clinical research evidence, ancient literature, and expert experience and consensus. In the process of formulating, there are deviations in understanding and application of the expert consensus method and expert experience, resulting in opaque of the recommendations, unclear of the details of the diagnosis and treatment strategy, less prominent of the advantages and value of traditional Chinese medicine, which affects the scientificity, transparency, applicability, promotion and application of the guidelines of traditional Chinese medicine or integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine. This study discusses the guiding principle of “evidence as a core, consensus as a supplement, and experience as a reference” that was generally followed and puts forward detailed methodological suggestions to the formulation of guidelines for traditional Chinese medicine and integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine.