Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) and systematic reviews are both critical tools in evidence-based medicine, but they serve distinct purposes and differ in their structure, objectives, and applications.

Clinical Practice Guidelines

• The purpose is to generate actionable recommendations for clinicians to guide care delivery (e.g., improve outcomes, reduce variability)

• Integrate evidence with clinical expertise, patient values and resource considerations

• Often developed by multidisciplinary panels, including clinicians, researchers and patients

Systematic Reviews (with or without meta-analysis)

• The purpose is to summarize and synthesize all relevant research on a specific and narrow question or topic by providing a detailed and structured summary of evidence (e.g., forest plots, evidence tables, meta-analysis) on that specific topic

• Focus on evaluating the quality and reliability of the evidence, identifying knowledge gaps, and informing further research

• Rigorously conducted by researchers/clinicians using predefined protocols (e.g., pre-registered in PROSPERO) and guidelines (e.g., PRISMA)