تعليقThe 2022 consolidated guidelines represent a significant update compared to the previous guidelines issued in 2014. They include: (i) new recommendations based on the review of newly available evidence related to the Population, Intervention, Comparator and Outcomes (PICO) questions that were developed for this guideline update; (ii) recommendations with relevance to children and adolescents from other WHO TB guidelines issued since 2014; and (iii) a few recommendations from the 2014 guidance that remain unchanged. These latter recommendations cover key components of high-quality TB care for which a review of the evidence was either not done (such as HIV testing for persons with presumptive TB and TB disease), or for which no new evidence was available. A summary of the changes to the 2014 guidance is provided in the supplementary table in annex 2.
The full details of the new recommendations, including evidence and justification, subgroup and implementation considerations and monitoring and evaluation, are provided in this guideline. Other WHO recommendations relevant to the management of TB in children and adolescents have been consolidated in tables in the relevant chapters. It is important to note that the original wording of the recommendations based on the source guidelines has been included. In some source guidelines, age groups have been defined differently compared to the 2022 consolidated guidelines on the management of TB in children and adolescents, and the adult age group may include adolescents aged 15 years and above. Where this is the case, it has been indicated in the tables. Users of this guideline update are advised to refer to the original guideline for full information related to the recommendation. In addition, all WHO recommendations on TB are now included in the WHO TB Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP)¹⁹ which can be searched by population (e.g. children or people living with HIV) or by topic (e.g. diagnosis or treatment). Refer to section 1.7 for further details.
For ease of reference, a full overview of all new and consolidated recommendations is included in web annex 5.