Objectives: The aim of the EULAR/ESCISIT initiative was to develop evidence-based recommendations for the management of Behçet's disease (BD), supplemented where necessary by expert opinions and taking already published data into consideration. The current article briefly summarises the results in German and comments on them.
Methods: The multidisciplinary expert committee consisted of nine rheumatologists, three ophthalmologists, one internist, one dermatologist, and one neurologist, representing six European countries, Tunisia and Korea. One patient representative was also present. Problem areas and related keywords for a systematic literature search were identified. A systematic literature research was performed using MedLine and the Cochrane library up to December 2006. Consequently, 40 initial statements were generated based on the literature research. These yielded the final recommendations which resulted from two blind Delphi rounds of voting.
Results: Nine recommendations were developed for the management of different aspects of BD. The strength of each recommendation was determined by the level of evidence and the expert's opinions. The level of agreement for each recommendation was determined using a visual analogue scale for both the whole committee and for each individual viewpoint of the subgroup, who considered themselves experts in that field of BD. There was excellent concordance between the level of agreement of the whole group and the "experts in the field".
Conclusion: Recommendations relating to eye, skin, and mucosal disease, as well as arthritis are mainly evidence-based, while recommendations on vascular disease and neurological and gastrointestinal involvement are based largely on expert opinions and uncontrolled evidence from open trials and observational studies. The need for further properly designed controlled clinical trials is apparent.