Introduction:

Developmental defects are due to congenital malformations, deformations or disruptions. Lip and/or palate fissures are congenital structural deficiencies caused by lack of conjunction between developing embryonic facial processes.

Objective:

Evaluate the quality of cleft lip and/or palate management guidelines.

Methods:

A descriptive study was conducted. Evaluation was performed of six cleft lip and/or palate management guidelines published in English and Spanish from 1990 to 2012. The search was both electronic (global level) and manual (local level). The electronic search included databases such as MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE and SciELO, whereas for the manual search written requests for guidelines were sent to public and private organizations that manage cleft lip and/or palate patients, such as the Military Hospital, San José Hospital, Operación Sonrisa (Operation Smile) and El Bosque University. For their selection, the guidelines were filtered by title and content. Before assessing the guidelines, the evaluators standardized them. Finally, evaluation of the guidelines was performed following the instructions in the AGREE II tool.

Results:

The Chilean clinical guideline obtained 100 % in domains 1 and 4, whereas the guideline from Saint Thomas University in Bucaramanga obtained less than 50 % in the six domains.

Conclusions:

None of the management guidelines for cleft lip and/or palate evaluated met all the quality criteria in the AGREE II tool.

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