News: American Heart and Stroke Associations rescind sections of new stroke guidelines

The American Heart Association (AHA)/American Stroke Association (ASA) has rescinded its recently released stroke guidelines, publishing a correction in which large portions of the document have been deleted, Medscape reported.

“Based on recent feedback received from the clinical stroke community […] the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association has reviewed the guideline and is preparing clarifications, modifications, and/or updates to several sections in it,” a paper published online in Stroke says. “Currently, those sections […]have been deleted from the guideline while this clarifying work is in progress.”

The original guidelines were published in Stroke and they were announced at the International Stroke Conference by the writing committee in January 2018.

All told, eight sections have been deleted from the guideline. What’s more, the rescinding of the guidelines was done without the agreement of the Guideline Writing Committee, according to Medscape.

“This action by the AHA was carried out against the strongly voiced opposition and without the agreement of the majority of the 2018 Acute Ischemic Stroke Writing Group,” William J. Powers, MD, chair of the Guideline Writing Committee and H. Houston Merritt Distinguished professor and chair, department of neurology, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Medscape Medical News.

 “This is a challenging and unfortunate situation. It’s not good for anyone—the AHA, the guidelines writing committee, or the patients,” said Mark Alberts, MD, chief of neurology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, according to Medscape.

According to Alberts, the guidelines stirred the pot originally because some in the medical community thought that the process used to draw up the guidelines resulted in a narrow perspective, Medscape reported.

Editor’s note: To read Medscape’s coverage of this story, click here. To read the guidelines as they were published in January, click here. To read the correction to the guidelines, click here.