The medical community relies on scientific evidence to guide clinical practice. Evidence from systematic reviews, randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs), case–control or cohort studies, observational studies, and expert opinions are used to make disease-specific practice recommendations. More than 100 grading systems are used to rate the strength of these recommendations (West et al., 2002). A centralized and transparent method for evaluating and comparing these studies with the goal of translating evidence-based medicine to clinical practice guidelines is the cornerstone of two such validation scales: the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) and Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT).
