Winter 2021 (Volume 31, Number 4)
Update from the Guidelines Committee
By Glen Hazlewood, MD, PhD, FRCPC
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This has been another busy year for the CRA Guidelines
Committee and the various guideline panels,
not only due to the urgency for COVID-19 guidance,
but due to the high level of member engagement driving
the process of guidelines development. We have made tremendous
strides in the past year on a number of clinical
guidelines, and I’m pleased to provide this snapshot of our
accomplishments in 2021:
COVID-19 Vaccination Guidelines:In May, we published
an update to the CRA Recommendation on
COVID-19 Vaccination to include the AstraZeneca and
Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and this recommendation
was updated again in November to include adolescents.
The CRA COVID-19 Vaccination Decision Tool was updated
in May to include pediatric guidance. In addition
to these updates, a new conditional recommendation for
three doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was published in
November.
JIA Uveitis Guidelines:Co-chaired by Dr. Roberta
Berard and Dr. Deb Levy, the Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis
(JIA) Uveitis Guidelines panel has been collaborating with
colleagues from the Canadian Ophthalmological Society
in the development of these clinical guidelines.
RA Guidelines:Chaired by Dr. Glen Hazlewood, the
rheumatoid arthritis (RA) guidelines are an adolopment of
the Australian guidelines, and the first recommendation
on tapering of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs
(DMARDs) is being finalized for publication on MAGICapp.
SpA Guidelines:Chaired by Dr. Sherry Rohekar, the
spondyloarthritis (SpA) guidelines are an adolopment of
the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) guidelines
and work is ongoing on the Evidence-to-Decision tables.
The year 2022 will see much of this important work
published, and we expect to add Transition from Pediatric-to-Adult Care Guidelines to that list as work is already
in full swing, co-chaired by Dr. Elizabeth Stringer and
Dr. Nadia Luca.
A sincere thank you to the Guidelines Committee
members for their continued guidance and expertise, and
to the various guideline panels whose hard work benefits
us all. A special thanks to Jordi Pardo and Peter Tugwell
from Cochrane Musculoskeletal, who provide expert methods
support to the CRA. We are also grateful to the patient
representatives from the Canadian Arthritis Patient
Alliance (CAPA) who sit on various guideline panels. We
approved a patient representative reimbursement and training
policy in recognition of their contributions to developing
equitable guidelines.
Glen Hazlewood, MD, PhD, FRCPC
Chair, CRA Guidelines Committee
Associate Professor,
Departments of Medicine and Community Health Sciences,
Cumming School of Medicine,
University of Calgary,
Calgary, Alberta
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