A plea for the use of systematic review methodology when writing guidelines and timely publication of guidelines

摘要

We wish to express concern about the timing and title of the recently published position paper by the Stroke Guidelines Expert Working Group. Because the paper post-dates the circulation of the 2010 Guidelines by about 2 years, the unwary reader may perceive that this article provides an update to these guidelines. This is certainly not the case because the main purpose of the article was to show how the 2010 guidelines have differed between the 2005 and 2007 stroke guidelines. This also highlights the problem of guideline development for stroke in Australia because there is no systematic or efficient mechanism to ensure timely updates when the evidence changes. A high-quality guideline requires clinical experts to perform thorough systematic reviews to support their recommendations and ensure that the recommendations accurately reflect the journal articles on which they are based.