A methodology for consensus conferences. Société Royale Belge de Gastro-entérologie.

Consensus conference is one of the methods proposed to develop clinical practice guidelines. This method is used when the topic is limited to a small numbers of questions (4 to 6) and when there is a controversy. This process is based on the meeting of a jury which reviews the scientific information provided by the literature and presented by experts. The consensus conference consists of three phases: A preliminary phase during which questions are well defined, experts and jury are chosen by a panel of organizers usually designed by scientific societies. In the jury there are multidisciplinary specialists, generalists practitioners and other people such as nurses, economists, ... Experts conduct the review and analysis of the literature. The jury is informed by organizers about the methodology of a consensus conference and about the quality of scientific information available. The second phase is the plenary session of the consensus conference. It lasts one or two days during which the expert's texts and presentation are discussed by the jury and a public. The third phase is the actual meeting of the jury, behind closed doors, during which conclusions and clinical practice guidelines are formulated. Dissemination of these guidelines is one of the major factors determining the impact of the consensus conference. These guidelines are usually mailed directly to the professionals concerned and published in scientific journals and dissiminated via professional associations, universities, post graduate training bodies, ... The impact of the conference is assessed one or two years after and compared by the same method with the results of a preliminary survey before the conference. This process is long and expensive but is increasingly used because of the necessity for physicians to assimilate and to integrate into their daily clinical practice an increasing mass of scientific information.