However, these reviews were not exhaustive, as specialty or regional databases were not searched, and manual searching of journals was not performed for these reviews. In the development of these guidelines, no scoping exercise with patients, searches of the quali- tative literature, or formal qualitative evidence synthesis examining patient experiences and priorities were undertaken. As noted, although resource implications were considered in the formulation of recommendations, formal economic evaluations were not un- dertaken for all topics. methods for guideline development www.kidney-international.org Biographic and disclosure information Alfred K. Cheung, MD (Work Group Co-Chair), is Dialysis Research Foundation Presidential Endowed Chair, Professor of Internal Medicine, Chief of the Division of Nephrology & Hypertension, Execu- tive Director of the Dialysis Program, and Vice-chair for Research in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. His research has focused on CKD, hemodialysis, vascular access, and hypertension. He has served on various com- mittees in the American Society of Nephrology, the US Na- tional Kidney Foundation, the US Food & Drug Administration, the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and as a councilor at the International Society of Nephrology. He has also been a chartered member or ad hoc member of grant review committees for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other research funding orga- nizations. He was interim Co-Editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Society of Nephrology. He co-chaired the Kidney Disease Outcome Quality Initiative (K/DOQI) guidelines on Cardiovascular Disease in Dialysis Patients. Of particular relevance to this task, he was a member of the Steering Committee and the Principal Inves- tigator of the Utah Clinical Center Network in the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) sponsored by the NIH. 