Yaolong Chen

• Doctor of Medicine
• Professor (Full) at Lanzhou University

Fibromyalgia is a prevalent chronic condition marked by widespread pain, fatigue, and other debilitating symptoms. This guideline provides evidence‐based recommendations for nonpharmacological treatments, developed by a multidisciplinary expert group, including specialists in rheumatology, rehabilitation, pain management, traditional Chinese medici...

Objective To assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of medical stakeholders regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools. Methods A cross‐sectional survey was conducted among stakeholders in medicine. Participants included researchers, clinicians, and medical journal editors with varying degrees of familiarity...

This quality improvement study examines the efficacy of a large language model to evaluate guidelines for therapeutic drug monitoring compared with human apparaisers.

Objectives Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools can enhance the quality and efficiency of medical research, but their improper use may result in plagiarism, academic fraud and unreliable findings. Transparent reporting of GAI use is essential, yet existing guidelines from journals and institutions are inconsistent, with no standardised pr...

Objectives: Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools can enhance the quality and efficiency of medical research, but their improper use may result in plagiarism, academic fraud and unreliable findings. Transparent reporting of GAI use is essential, yet existing guidelines from journals and institutions are inconsistent, with no standardised p...

To further enhance the quality and transparency of practice guidelines and consensus statements, the Scientific, Transparent, and Applicable Rankings (STAR) working group was officially established and commenced its work in 2021. The STAR tool contains 39 items grouped into 11 domains, with each domain and item assigned to a weight that reflects it...

Background Clinical research is essential for evidence-based decision-making in healthcare practice, but its conduct is hindered by various barriers. While previous studies suggest that clinical research units (CRUs) provide critical support and expertise for complex clinical research, their necessity for ensuring high-quality clinical research rem...

Importance Policies on conflicts of interest (COI) and funding are essential to reduce the risk of bias in the guideline development process. Objective To collate and review the content related to COI and funding policies from guideline development handbooks. Study design and setting We searched PubMed from its inception until September 10, 2021,...

Background: Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools are transforming healthcare, yet their effective integration depends on stakeholder perception. We conducted the first systematic review and meta-analysis to quantify global healthcare stakeholders’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) toward GAI tools. Methods: We systematically sear...

Objective To evaluate the methodological and reporting quality of clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus for ambulatory surgery centers published since 2000, combining manual assessment with large language model (LLM) analysis, while exploring LLMs' feasibility in quality evaluation. Methods We systematically searched Chinese/English databa...

Introduction A growing number of paediatric core outcome sets (COS) have been developed in the past 20 years. Previous studies have provided many useful insights into the uptake of COS. In addition to the awareness of COS among clinical trialists, the COS development process (especially patient participation) and the actions of the developers can p...

Purpose The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II Instrument (AGREE II) was developed to enhance the methodological rigor of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), aiming to generate trustworthy recommendations for various clinical scenarios. Despite its importance, there exists a gap in the quality of CPGs pertaining to Stevens–John...

Importance Medical reporting guidelines are significant in improving the transparency, quality, and integrity of medical research, particularly in randomized clinical trials; adherence to these guidelines supports research interpretability and has direct implications for downstream applications, such as patient treatment. However, with over 600 dis...

Background: Guideline developers have increasingly engaged various groups of interest-holders in different stages of guideline development. However, reporting on interest-holder engagement in practice guidelines often lacks transparency. Therefore, the RIGHT (Reporting Items of Practice Guidelines in Healthcare) working group, in collaboration with...

The advancement of large language models (LLMs) presents promising opportunities to enhance evidence synthesis efficiency, particularly in data extraction processes, yet existing prompts for data extraction remain limited, focusing primarily on commonly used items without accommodating diverse extraction needs. This research letter developed struct...

Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to enhance evidence synthesis efficiency and accuracy. This study assessed LLM-only and LLM-assisted methods in data extraction and risk of bias assessment for 107 trials on complementary medicine. Moonshot-v1-128k and Claude-3.5-sonnet achieved high accuracy (≥95%), with LLM-assisted methods performi...

The first Better evidence and RecommendatIons for the next Generation HealTh—BRIGHT symposium was held in Chongqing, China between June 21 and 23, 2024. The symposium did not only showcase the recent progress made by multidisciplinary teams in generating and translating evidence for children's healthcare, guideline development and evaluation, and t...

Background The application of large language models (LLMs) in medicine has received increasing attention, showing significant potential in teaching, research, and clinical practice, especially in knowledge extraction, management, and understanding. However, the use of LLMs in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has not been thoroughly studied. This...

Background The STAR (Scientific, Transparent, and Applicable rankings) working group conducts regular evaluations of Chinese guidelines and consensus statements. This study gathered insights from STAR working group members using qualitative interviews. Methods From March to August 2023, members of the STAR specialist committees were interviewed us...

Background: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized medical research, offering innovative solutions for data collection, patient engagement, and information dissemination. Powerful generative AI (GAI) tools like ChatGPT and other similar chatbots have emerged, facilitating user interactions with virtual conversational age...

Objective Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine (TCM and WM) are important medical documents used to assist medical decision‐making and are of great significance for standardizing clinical pathways. However, due to the constraints of text format, it is difficult for Integrated TCM and WM CPGs to...

Background Previously, we developed the Guidelines for the Management of Pediatric Off-Label Use of Drugs in China in addressing the need for standardization of pediatric off-label drug use. As the implementation of recommendations in Guidelines among healthcare professionals is weak, it is important to identify barriers to guideline implementation...

Introduction The development of patient and public versions of guidelines (PVGs) in China is still in its early stages. The aim of this article is to systematically identify the PVGs published or released in China, analyse their development methods, and assess their reporting quality. Methods We searched five major literature databases and conduct...

Objective As a large and populous country, China releases a high number of diagnostic criteria. However, the published diagnostic criteria have not yet been systematically analyzed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics, development methods, reporting quality, and evidence basis of diagnostic criteria published in C...

UNSTRUCTURED Introduction: The burden of multimorbidity is increasing globally, which complicates the use of guidelines in clinical practice and healthcare: practitioners may need to increasingly refer to multiple guidelines with potentially conflicting recommendations. We aim to develop a guideline-based decision support framework for the manageme...

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become widely applied in the field of medical research. In the process of conducting systematic reviews, similar tools can be used to expedite various steps, including defining clinical questions, performing the literature search, document screening, information extraction, and language refinement,...

Patient‐reported outcome measures (PROMs) are standardized and validated self‐administered questionnaires for assessing patients' overall well‐being, disease burden, and health‐related quality of life. For children, their cognitive development, reading ability and language skills need to be considered when selecting the optimal PROM. High‐quality s...

Introduction A growing number of pediatric core outcome sets (COS) have been developed in the past 20 years. Previous studies have provided many useful insights into the uptake of COS. In addition to the awareness of COS among clinical trialists, some methodology of COS development (especially patient involvement) can promote COS uptake. However, t...

Background Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a common condition caused by an immune response to allergens such as pollens, dust mites, or pet dander. Its treatment includes a combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches, but there is no consensus on the most effective and safe combination of drugs. Network meta-analyses (NMA) can compr...

Introduction Large language model (LLM)-linked chatbots are being increasingly applied in healthcare due to their impressive functionality and public availability. Studies have assessed the ability of LLM-linked chatbots to provide accurate clinical advice. However, the methods applied in these Chatbot Assessment Studies are inconsistent due to the...

Background: Conflicts of interest (COIs) of contributors to a guideline project and the funding of that project can influence the development of the guideline. Comprehensive reporting of information on COIs and funding is essential for the transparency and credibility of guidelines. Objective: To develop an extension of the Reporting Items for pra...

High-quality Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) guidelines can standardize the clinical practices of relevant healthcare professionals, enhance medical quality, reduce healthcare costs, and promote the standardization of TCM. This article provides a summary and analysis of the status and quality of guidelines in the TCM. Additionally, it briefly in...

Objective To examine the current prevalence and cost of paediatric off-label drug prescriptions in Gansu, China, and the potential influencing factors. Design The prevalence of off-label prescriptions in paediatrics was evaluated according to the National Medical Products Administration drug instructions in the China Pharmaceutical Reference (Chin...

Objective: To investigate the frequency, determinants, stages, and barriers of patient and public involvement (PPI) in systematic reviews, and to explore its association with the dissemination of reviews. Study Design and Setting: We examined systematic reviews that required the inclusion of a PPI declaration, published in The BMJ between January...

Background Despite being a global public health concern, there is a research gap in analyzing implementation strategies for managing off-label drug use in children. This study aims to understand professional health managers’ perspectives on implementing the Guideline in hospitals and determine the Guideline’s implementation facilitators and barrier...

Background The hospitalization rate of ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs) has been recognized as an essential indicator reflective of the overall performance of healthcare system. At present, ACSCs has been widely used in practice and research to evaluate health service quality and efficiency worldwide. The definition of ACSCs varies acro...

Despite the increasing number of radiological case reports, the majority lack a standardised methodology of writing and reporting. We therefore develop a reporting guideline for radiological case reports based on the CAse REport (CARE) statement. We established a multidisciplinary group of experts, comprising 40 radiologists, methodologists, journa...

Yu Fujiwara and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis exploring the association between immune checkpoint blockade and treatment-related deaths in patients with solid tumours. However, we have some concerns regarding the statistical approach used. In Fujiwara and colleagues meta-analysis, the authors included a total of 28 randomised controlled tri...

UNSTRUCTURED Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become widely applied in the field of medical research. In the process of conducting systematic reviews, similar tools can be used to expedite various steps, including defining clinical questions, performing the literature search, document screening, information extraction, and language...

Background: Based on the main document of the Reporting Items of Practice Guidelines in Healthcare (RIGHT) statement, this study will aim to develop the reporting checklist applicable to the guidelines of Chinese patent medicine (CPM). Methods: According to the methodology recommended by the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research...

To theEditor—We read with interest the recent work by Felix Bergmann et al. evaluating the efficacy of corticosteroid therapy as an adjunctive treatment for hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) [1]. The results indicated that adjunctive systemic corticosteroid therapy can reduce the 30-day all-cause mortality rate in hospit...

The quality of reporting practice guidelines is often poor, and there is no widely accepted ­guidance or standards for such reporting in health care. The international RIGHT (Reporting Items for practice Guidelines in HealThcare) Working Group was established to address this gap. The group followed an existing framework for developing guidelines fo...

Background An increasing number of systematic reviews (SRs) in the environmental field have been published in recent years as a result of the global concern about the health impacts of air pollution and temperature. However, no study has assessed and compared the methodological and reporting quality of SRs on the health effects of air pollutants an...

Objectives To systematically collect and analyse diverse definitions of ‘evidence’ in both health and social sciences, and help users to correctly use the term ‘evidence’ and rethink what is the definition of ‘evidence’ in scientific research. Design Scoping review. Methods Definitions of evidence in the health sciences and social sciences were i...

Background The hospitalization rate of ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs) has been recognized as an essential indicator reflective of the overall performance of healthcare system. At present, ACSCs has been widely used in practice and research to evaluate health service quality and efficiency worldwide. The definition of ACSCs varies acro...

Background Gut microbiome dysbiosis has been implicated in various gastrointestinal and extra-gastrointestinal diseases, but evidence on the efficacy and safety of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for therapeutic indications remains unclear. Methods The gutMDisorder database was used to summarize the associations between gut microbiome dysbi...

Background: Existing reporting guidelines pay insufficient attention to the detail and comprehensiveness reporting of surgical technique. The Surgical techniqUe rePorting chEcklist and standaRds (SUPER) aims to address this gap by defining reporting standards for surgical technique. The SUPER guideline intends to apply to articles that encompass s...

Sertraline has been shown to be effective in the treatment of depression. However, the relationship between the dosage of sertraline and its efficacy and safety are unclear. We identified RCTs that compared sertraline with placebo for the treatment of depression, conducted conventional meta-analyses on the efficacy and safety of sertraline, and ass...

Introduction Health information literacy is critical for individuals to obtain, understand, screen, and apply health information. However, there is currently no specific tool available to evaluate all four dimensions of health information literacy in China. Public health emergencies can present an opportunity to evaluate and monitor the health info...

Background: Surgical technique plays an essential role in achieving good health outcomes. However, the quality of surgical technique reporting remains heterogeneous. Reporting checklists could help authors to describe the surgical technique more transparently and effectively, as well as to assist reviewers and editors evaluate it more informativel...

Background: This study aimed to develop a comprehensive instrument for evaluating and ranking clinical practice guidelines, named Scientific, Transparent and Applicable Rankings tool (STAR), and test its reliability, validity, and usability. Methods: This study set up a multidisciplinary working group including guideline methodologists, statisti...

Objective: (i) To analyze trends and gaps in evidence of health effects on pollutants and extreme temperatures by evidence mapping; (ii) to conduct a cross-sectional survey on the use of GRADE in systematic reviews or meta-analyses (SR/MAs) of health effects on pollutants and extreme temperatures. Study design and setting: PubMed, Embase, the Co...

Objective To compare the benefits and harms of drug treatments for adults with type 2 diabetes, adding non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (including finerenone) and tirzepatide (a dual glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP)/glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist) to previously existing treatment options. Des...

Clinical practice guidelines in Traditional Chinese Medicine (CPG-TCM) is the recommendation that aims to provide the best service to users by identifying and summarizing the rules of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and regression of diseases based on systematic reviews of evidence and balancing the advantages and disadvantages of...

Objectives To systematically explore how the sources of evidence, types of primary studies, and tools used to assess the quality of the primary studies vary across systematic reviews (SRs) in public health. Methods We conducted a methodological survey of SRs in public health by searching the of literature in selected journals from electronic bibli...

Background Intraoperative peritoneal lavage (IOPL) with saline has been widely used in surgical practice. However, the effectiveness of IOPL with saline in patients with intra-abdominal infections (IAIs) remains controversial. This study aims to systematically review randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effectiveness of IOPL in patien...

Background: At the 74th World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a strategy for the prevention and control of several major infectious diseases. To achieve the WHO-initiated targets for these infectious diseases, the elimination of mother-to-child transmission is essential. To date, a systematic review of the global and re...

Objectives: This study aims to identify existing reporting standards for child health research, assess the robustness of the standards development process, and evaluate the dissemination of these standards. Study design and setting: We searched MEDLINE, the EQUATOR Network Library and Google to identify reporting standards for child health resea...

Background Propensity score analysis is increasingly used to control for confounding factors in observational studies. Unfortunately, unavoidable missing values make estimating propensity scores extremely challenging. We propose a new method for estimating propensity scores in data with missing values. Materials and methods Both simulated and real...

Background: Cerebral resuscitation is one of the main therapeutic aims in the treatment of cardiac arrest (CA) patients who experience a return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). However, the therapeutic effects of current treatments are not ideal. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of neurological function of acupuncture combi...

IMPORTANCE Short-course antibiotic therapy could enhance adherence and reduce adverse drug effects and costs. However, based on sparse evidence, most guidelines recommend a longer course of antibiotics for nonsevere childhood community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). OBJECTIVE To determine whether a shorter course of antibiotics was noninferior to a lon...

A clinical practice guideline (CPG; hereafter referred to as “guideline”) protocol is a document that outlines and maps out the plan or steps for developing a guideline, as well as the methods to be used. The preparation and publication of a guideline protocol helps clarify the purpose and scope of the guideline, facilitates the guideline developme...

Objective To identify reporting guidelines related to surgical technique and propose recommendations for areas that require improvement. Study Design and Setting A protocol-guided scoping review was conducted. A literature search of MEDLINE, the EQUATOR Network Library, Google Scholar, and Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations was...

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory arthropathy. Recommendations for RA, specifically on pharmacotherapy, are essential in clinical practice. However, the direction and strength of recommendations are controversial across current clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) of RA. Objective: To systematically analyze t...

Comparative diagnostic test accuracy study, a type of diagnostic accuracy test, aims to compare accuracy of two or more index tests in a study. The application of GRADE in comparative test accuracy differs from single test accuracy, mainly including the selection of appropriate comparative study designs, additional criteria for judging risk of bias...