Comparing guidelines for the management of anogenital warts

What is the purpose of guidelines for management of clinical conditions? Implicit in the term guidelines is that they should provide a guide to diagnosis, treatment, and related management issues of a specific condition without being unduly prescriptive as that may alienate their use by those who do not always want to follow the “mantra.” Successful guidelines based on sound evidence should be seen to improve outcomes for patients and be adapted across the spectrum of services to which the particular condition presents. Two recently published evidence based guidelines—the national guidelines for the management of anogenital warts1 (AGW) and the European course on the HPV associated pathology: guidelines for the diagnosis and management of AGW,2 are efforts to accomplish these aims. Comparing these two, the most striking differences are ones of style and scope. The national guidelines is the work of a single author written to a brief …