Feasibility of national living guideline methods: The Australian Stroke Guidelines

Objective: Maintaining clinical guideline currency has been one challenge to traditional guideline development. This paper describes the methods used to maintain a large national guideline for stroke management. Study design and setting: The Australian Stroke Clinical Guidelines are developed to meet Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) standards. Monthly surveillance is conducted for new systematic reviews and randomised controlled studies. Included studies undergo data extraction followed by preparation of updated evidence-to-decision frameworks which are used to inform updates, or development of new recommendations. Small writing groups made up of clinical experts and those with lived experience review and agree on changes, which are finally reviewed by a multidisciplinary Guidelines Steering Group. Draft changes are developed and published using the online MAGICapp platform, with dissemination and promotion via traditional methods as well as social media. Results: Each month approximately 350 abstracts are considered, covering 96 clinical topics and taking on average 16 h to review. There have been four major guideline updates covering 34 new and updated recommendations. Conclusion: It is feasible to use ‘living’ methods to maintain the Australian Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management. Further work is now needed to understand the impact of living guidelines.