Conflicts Common Among Heart Guideline Writers

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today Published: March 28, 2011 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. More than half of the experts who wrote cardiology clinical practice guidelines reported conflicts of interest, researchers reported. And more than 80% of the chairs of the writing committees reported at least one conflict, according to James Kirkpatrick, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues./.../ On the positive side, there appears to be a "substantial pool" of writers and reviewers without conflicts, Kirkpatrick and colleagues reported in the March 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine