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Standard Recommendation Statement
A standard Recommendation Statement includes the following:
Summary of Recommendation and Evidence
The Summary describes the recommendation and includes the letter grade. The Summary is the "bottom line" of the USPSTF's Recommendation statement.
Structured Rationale
The Structured Rationale is a summary of the USPSTF's reasoning for its recommendation. This section provides a more detailed description of considerations for that particular recommendation. For example, the rationale for a screening service includes information about the importance of the condition, detection of the condition, benefits and harms of early detection and treatment, and critical gaps in knowledge. This section concludes with a brief overall assessment of the evidence.
Clinical Considerations
The Clinical Considerations section includes detailed information about how to provide or offer the preventive service in the clinical setting. This section identifies the population for whom the recommendation is intended and provides practical information on use of the service (for example, information on tests and how often to provide them, ages when patients should start or stop the service, risk factors, and treatment).
Other Considerations
The Other Considerations section provides information to help clinicians and policymakers on cost and cost-effectiveness, resources required to implement the service, and current practice. In this section, the USPSTF identifies key gaps in the evidence and discusses priorities for future research and research funding.
Discussion
The Discussion section describes the scope of the evidence review and provides additional detail on how the evidence of benefits and harms and the collective judgment of the USPSTF were combined to determine the recommendation. The USPSTF uses this section to summarize its interpretation of important individual studies or groups of studies and to indicate how the evidence justifies its recommendations.
Recommendations of Others
This section summarizes how other organizations and professional groups have judged the use or performance of this service.
References
The References section at the end of the Recommendation Statement lists citations from the Statement.
Current as of July 2010
Internet Citation:
Standard Recommendation Statement. U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/rec_answer.htm
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