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Neonatal jaundice

● Intrapartum care: care of healthy women and their babies during childbirth. NICE clinical
guideline 55 (2007). Available from www.nice.org.uk/CG55
● Routine postnatal care of women and their babies. NICE clinical guideline 37 (2006).
Available from www.nice.org.uk/CG37

2.6 Guideline methodology

This guideline was developed in accordance with the NICE guideline development process
outlined in the 2005 and 2009 editions of the Guidelines technical manual
(www.nice.org.uk/guidelinesmanual). Table 2.1 summarises the key stages of the guideline
development process and which version of the process was followed for each stage.

Table 2.1 Stages in the NICE guideline development process and the guideline versions followed at
each stage
Stage 2005 2007 2009
Scoping the guideline (determining what the guideline would and would not cover) 
Preparing the work plan (agreeing timelines, milestones, guideline development group 
constitution etc)
Forming and running the guideline development group 
Developing clinical questions 
Identifying the evidence 
Reviewing and grading the evidence 
Incorporating health economics 
Making group decisions and reaching consensus 
Linking guidance to other NICE guidance 
Creating guideline recommendations 
Developing clinical audit criteria
Writing the guideline  
Validation (stakeholder consultation on the draft guideline)  
Pre-publication check 
Internal validity check 
Declaration of interests   

Literature search strategy
Initial scoping searches were executed to identify relevant guidelines (local, national and
international) produced by other development groups. The reference lists in these guidelines
were checked against subsequent searches to identify missing evidence.

Relevant published evidence to inform the guideline development process and answer the
clinical questions was identified by systematic search strategies. The questions are presented in
Appendix H.

Systematic searches to answer the clinical questions formulated and agreed by the Guideline
Development Group (GDG) were executed using the following databases via the ‘Ovid’
platform: Medline (1966 onwards), Embase (1980 onwards), Cumulative Index to Nursing and
Allied Health Literature (1982 onwards), and PsycINFO (1967 onwards). The most recent search
conducted for the three Cochrane databases (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials,
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects)
was Quarter 2, 2009. Searches to identify economic studies were undertaken using the above
databases and the NHS Economic Evaluations Database (NHS EED).

Search strategies combined relevant controlled vocabulary and natural language in an effort to
balance sensitivity and specificity. Unless advised by the GDG, searches were not date specific.
Language restrictions were not applied to searches, although publications in languages other

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