Comparative analysis between cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines in clinical, European, American and Costa Rican practice between 2016 and 2019

Abstract

Introduction: Cardiovascular diseases have been increasing in recent years, becoming the main causes of death worldwide, this due to the impoverishment of current lifestyles that have forced them to have an accelerated rate with slight awareness of health. Among the main diseases are high blood pressure, type II diabetes, coronary heart disease and strokes. Methodology: A comparison was made between the three cardiovascular prevention guides, taking structure, content and quality as variables, for the structure and content variable, information was collected from the guides that were subsequently tabulated to observe the differences between them, for the quality variable the AGREE II instrument was used, consisting of six domains divided into 23 items, which evaluate different aspects of the guidelines, the use of the instrument required the help of four evaluators, a cardiology specialist, a general practitioner, a university intern and a medical student . Results: The Costa Rican guide in the evaluation of structure and content stood out above the other guides, by meeting the highest number of indicators, while in the quality evaluation the American guide obtained first place with 78%, followed by the guide Costa Rican with 77% and with a lower level of quality the European guide with 70%. Conclusion: The American guide stood out in the evaluation given by AGREE II in terms of quality, followed by the Costa Rican guide and finally the one with the lowest score was the European guide with significant deficiencies in content and compliance with the evaluation instrument criteria. Although the American guide obtained the best quality rating, it was not the guide with a remarkable content since the Costa Rican guide has been adapted to the current population and its diversity.