Living guidelines updates
The Stroke Foundation’s Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management are evolving into the world's first living guidelines as the next generation of health evidence translation.
This three-year pilot project is building and evaluating a dynamically updating summary of stroke evidence to guide clinical practice and policy development.
Draft recommendations will be posted here during public consultation.
New and updated recommendations
Draft recommendations for public consultation
Changes to background evidence or text including practical information
How living guidelines work
Suggest new topics or questions
Contact
New and updated recommendations
Recommendations for the following topics have been updated based on new research evidence, in accordance with the 2011 NHMRC Standard for clinical practice guidelines.
| Topic | Date | Change |
| Acute antiplatelet therapy (Chapter 3) | 11/02/2021 | A new drug, ticagrelor, in combination with aspirin soon after a minor ischaemic stroke or high-risk transient ischaemic attack, may be considered to prevent another stroke. |
| Oxygen therapy (Chapter 3) |
11/02/2021 | More specific targets and thresholds set for blood oxygen levels, above which supplemental oxygen should not be given. |
| Cholesterol lowering therapy (Chapter 4) | 11/02/2021 | A new target set for lowering LDL cholesterol to prevent further strokes and cardiovascular disease. |
| Weakness (Chapter 5) | 11/02/2021 | Added new evidence for recovery of muscle strength with progressive resistance training. Also a new recommendation for certain types of repetitive practice. |
| Shoulder pain (Chapter 6) | 11/02/2021 | Electrical stimulation may now be used for pain management, when previously it was recommended against. Acupuncture may also be used to reduce pain. |
| Thrombolysis (Chapter 3) | 7/11/2019 | Time window for intravenous thrombolysis extended up to 9 hours after a person has had their stroke, if brain scans show they will benefit. The 9 hours can be counted from the mid-point of sleep if the person woke up with stroke symptoms. Tenecteplase may also be used in thrombolysis as an alternative to alteplase, especially for people with a blockage in large brain arteries. |
| Acute antithrombotic therapy (Chapter 3) | 7/11/2019 | Upgrade to strong recommendation for taking the antiplatelet medications aspirin and clopidogrel together in the first three weeks after a minor stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA). |
| Patent foramen ovale (PFO) management (Chapter 4) | 7/11/2019 | Closing a PFO (patent foramen ovale) is recommended when people under 60 years old have had a stroke, and other possible causes of their stroke have been ruled out. |
See all current recommendations in the Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management.
Draft recommendations for public consultation
When new research evidence leads to a change in recommendations, our Guidelines Working Group prepares drafts to be submitted to the NHMRC for approval under section 14A of the National Health and Medical Research Council Act 1991. As part of the approval process, we seek public submissions on the draft recommendations.
There are currently no draft recommendations for public consultation.
Changes to background evidence or text including practical information
Minor changes have been made to a number of topics. These are summarised below and can be found in the Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management.
| Topic | Date published | Comment |
| Pre-hospital care (Chapter 1) | September 2020 | Updated practical info for interventions by paramedics. |
How living guidelines work
The living guidelines use ‘evidence surveillance’ systems that continually scan for relevant new research, incorporate it into evidence summaries and rapidly update guideline recommendations whenever there is a substantial change in the evidence.
The ultimate goal is to create a near real-time, closed-loop evidence system in which global evidence and local data are integrated for insight and health decision making.
This work will be supported by new evidence systems from Cochrane Australia, including artificial intelligence, the Cochrane Crowd citizen science community, and the Covidence online systematic review platform.
Guideline recommendations will continue to be developed and published using the MAGICapp platform.
Suggest a new topic or question
To keep our living guidelines relevant, we annually review the topics the guidelines cover and the questions about practice that they answer. The current topics make up the table of contents of the Clinical Guidelines.
We welcome your suggestions for new topics that you believe are critical to include. New topics will be considered during our project steering committee's annual review.
Please email your suggestions to guidelines@strokefoundation.org.au
Contact
For more information or to consider volunteering in the expert working group, please contact guidelines@strokefoundation.org.au
This project is a partnership between the Stroke Foundation and Cochrane Australia, and is supported by the Australian government’s Medical Research Future Fund.
