The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.
The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.
Name of the PSP
Congenital Heart Disease PSP
Please describe the scope of the PSP
The scope of the Congenital Heart Disease PSP is defined as: the management of congenital heart disease throughout life, including prior to birth, focusing on:
- Diagnosis, during pregnancy or after birth
- Treatment (medical therapy, catheter intervention, surgery including mechanical support & transplantation, lifestyle, or psychosocial intervention), and
- Outcomes of the conditions and/or treatments and the impact on patients and their families, including the physical, psychological, and social effects of living with congenital heart disease.
The PSP excluded from its scope questions about:
- Non-management related aspects of congenital heart disease, such as aetiology or non-clinical genetics
- Acquired heart disease, other than occurring in the context of congenital heart disease
- Other co-morbidities, such as non-cardiac aspects of associated syndromes.
Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered
We used a targeted approach to searching for evidence in order to keep to the time constraints of the project. We searched for guidelines and systematic reviews using general terms for congenital heart disease, we also included terms for specific CHD conditions on a question-by-question basis as necessary.
We considered a question to be unanswered if a there is no systematic review evidence available for that question, or if the most recent relevant guidelines or systematic review/s concluded that there is insufficient evidence.
Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered
The types of evidence we will use to identify those questions which are unanswered are as follows:
- Systematic reviews
- Clinical guidelines
Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence
Clinical guidelines:
- NICE
- SIGN
- Pubmed search for guidelines
- European Society of Cardiology/Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health/American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology
Systematic Reviews:
- Cochrane database of systematic reviews
- Epistamonikos (last 5 years)
- Pubmed (last 5 years)
Consultation with experts on SGM to identify key papers and guidance and citation searches.
What search terms did you use?
The following sample strategy was used and modified as necessary for the different databases
- (heart adj2 (defect* or abnormal* or malform*))
- (congenital adj2 (heart or cardiac or cardio*))
- OR/1 to 2
Relevant index terms will be included when available.
Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations
The parameters of the search was as follows:
- Due to UK focus of PSP searches were limited to English language articles only
- To ensure retrieval of the most recent literature searches were limited to the last 5 years
- Appropriate filters were used to limit search to guidelines in Pubmed
Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking
Clare Herd
On what date was the question verification process completed?
11/03/2022
Any other relevant information
N/A