Consensus outcome rating for international neonatal resuscitation guidelines

The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation uses the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) working group method to evaluate the quality of evidence and the strength of treatment recommendations. This method requires guideline developers to use a numerical rating of the importance of each specified outcome. There are currently no uniform reporting guidelines or outcome measures for neonatal resuscitation science. We describe consensus outcome ratings from a survey of 64 neonatal resuscitation guideline developers representing seven international resuscitation councils. Among 25 specified outcomes, 10 were considered critical for decision-making. The five most critically rated outcomes were death, moderate-severe neurodevelopmental impairment, blindness, cerebral palsy and deafness. These data inform outcome rankings for systematic reviews of neonatal resuscitation science and international guideline development using the GRADE methodology.