Strength of Recommendation and Quality of Evidence

Strong Recommendations — Most individuals should follow the recommended course of action. Formal decision aids are not likely to be needed to help individual patients make decisions consistent with their values and preferences.
Conditional Recommendations — Recognize that different choices will be appropriate for individual patients and that you must help each patient arrive at a management decision consistent with his or her values and preferences. Decision aids may be useful in helping individuals to make decisions consistent with their individual risks, values and preferences.

The methodology for determining the strength of each recommendation and the quality of the evidence supporting the recommendations was adapted from GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. Guyatt GH, et al; GRADE Working Group. 2008;336(7650):924–926. More details on this specific adaptation of the GRADE process can be found in the 2018 ASH Clinical Practice Guidelines for Management of VTE: HIT.1

1 Cuker A, Arepally GM, Chong BH, et al. American Society of Hematology 2018 guidelines for management of venous thromboembolism: heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. Blood Adv. 2018;2(22). In press.