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Table 4 Levels of quality of evidence and their definition in GRADE approach

From: Policy for developing clinical practice guidelines of Japanese Society for Dialysis Therapy

Quality of evidence

Conventional definition

New definition

High

Further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimated effect.

We are very confident that the true effect lies close to that of the estimated effect.

Moderate

Further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimated effect and may change the estimate.

We are moderately confident in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be close to the estimated effect, but there is a possibility that it is substantially different.

Low

Further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimated effect and is likely to change the estimate

Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited: The true effect may be substantially different from the estimated effect.

Very low

Any estimate of effect is very uncertain.

We have very little confidence in the estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimated effect.

  1. The table was drawn from Ref. [10] but the definitions were originally from Ref [19]