Akintayo, R.O., Bahiri, R., El Miedany, Y. et al. (22 more authors) (2021) African League Against Rheumatism (AFLAR) preliminary recommendations on the management of rheumatic diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Rheumatology, 40 (9). pp. 3445-3454. ISSN 0770-3198
Abstract
Objectives
To develop recommendations for the management of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Method
A task force comprising of 25 rheumatologists from the 5 regions of the continent was formed and operated through a hub-and-spoke model with a central working committee (CWC) and 4 subgroups. The subgroups championed separate scopes of the clinical questions and formulated preliminary statements of recommendations which were processed centrally in the CWC. The CWC and each subgroup met by several virtual meetings, and two rounds of voting were conducted on the drafted statements of recommendations. Votes were online-delivered and recommendations were pruned down according to predefined criteria. Each statement was rated between 1 and 9 with 1–3, 4–6 and 7–9 representing disagreement, uncertainty and agreement, respectively. The levels of agreement on the statements were stratified as low, moderate or high according to the spread of votes. A statement was retired if it had a mean vote below 7 or a ‘low’ level of agreement.
Results
A total of 126 initial statements of recommendations were drafted, and these were reduced to 22 after the two rounds of voting.
Conclusions
The preliminary statements of recommendations will serve to guide the clinical practice of rheumatology across Africa amidst the changing practices and uncertainties in the current era of COVID-19. It is recognized that further updates to the recommendations will be needed as more evidence emerges.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | African rheumatology; COVID-19; DMARD; Rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases; Rheumatology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 05 Oct 2020 12:24 |
Last Modified: | 01 Feb 2022 12:14 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10067-020-05355-2 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165627 |