Osteoporosis: guidelines cover almost all important health care aspects

In order to update a report from 2016, the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) searched for current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) on osteoporosis, summarized their recommendations in key statements, and checked whether they were suitable for a possible disease management programme (DMP) “osteoporosis”. According to the findings, recommendations that could be relevant for a DMP exist for nearly all topics. Only integrated concepts of medical and physical rehabilitation were missing. The Institute had identified this gap already in 2016.

More guidelines from Germany

The researchers were able to include a total of 23 guidelines with 643 recommendations in their current report. Only seven guidelines had already been included in the final report from 2016. Again, most guidelines were from the United States (eight) and the United Kingdom (four). However, three guidelines were from Germany – in the first IQWiG report, this had only been the case for one single guideline.

From all guidelines, key statements considered suitable by the Institute for a future DMP could be identified on eight health care aspects. Their main contents were diagnostics, therapeutic interventions and monitoring.

The guidelines contain relatively few recommendations on therapy goals, cooperation of the health care sectors (case management and integrated health care approach) as well as patient training.

As in the previous report, the Institute did not find any specific recommendations on integrated concepts of medical and physical rehabilitation as a separate service in those guidelines.

Process of report production

The Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) commissioned IQWiG to prepare the report in an accelerated process, known as a “rapid report”. Interim products are therefore not published and are not the subject of a hearing. The present rapid report was sent to the commissioning agency in April 2018.