The dissemination of surgical clinical practice guidelines—evaluating SAGES’ strategies for distribution

Background: The Society of Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) has been a leader in the development of surgical clinical practice guidelines; however, the dissemination and implementation of these remains a challenge. We aim to analyze the user interaction with the SAGES website (sages.org) guidelines’ page and guideline downloads from their associated journal SurgicalEndoscopy to help inform the organization about its distribution and dissemination methods. Methods: Google analytics from the sages.org website and Surgical Endoscopy downloads for each guideline were obtained from July 2023 to April 2024, as well as number of downloads for the lifetime of the guideline. Data were organized by overall guideline popularity, defined as number of sages.org views or number of journal downloads, and its associated citations. Popularity by country was only informed by google analytics data from sages.org. The country’s associated economic status—high, upper middle, lower middle, and low-income was obtained and a chi-squared test, applied to proportions, was performed on each guideline to determine if the economic status of the country significantly influences guideline popularity (p-value less than 0.05, confidence interval 95%). Results: The hiatal hernia guideline had the most sages.org views and citations over the 9-month period; however, the management of diverticulitis guideline had the most journal downloads from time of publication. Colorectal surgery (CRS) guidelines were the most popular category in journal downloads which was not observed in sages.org views. Additionally, the popularity significantly differed in four guidelines based on the country’s economic status. Conclusions: Society websites and journals were found to be reasonable platforms for dissemination of guidelines, with viewership and download numbers in the tens of thousands for some articles. The variability in engagement across platforms may suggest different audiences with different needs. The data emphasizes the importance of SAGES diversifying their platforms for broader dissemination.