Medical societies unite on patient-centered measures for nonsurgical stroke interventions

FAIRFAX, Va.—The first outcome-based guidelines for interventional treatment of acute ischemic stroke—providing recommendations for rapid treatment—will benefit individuals suffering from brain attacks, often caused by artery-blocking blood clots. Representatives from the Society of Interventional Radiology and seven other medical societies created a multispecialty and international consensus on the metrics and benchmarks for processes of care and technical and clinical outcomes for stroke patients.

In February, the guidelines will be published first in SIR’s Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology and subsequently by each society either in its respective journal or on its website.

“These groundbreaking guidelines are the product of two years of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams from eight societies,” said Marshall E. Hicks, M.D., FSIR, president of the Society of Interventional Radiology, the national society of nearly 5,000 doctors, scientists and allied health professionals dedicated to improving health care through minimally invasive treatments. “With real progress being made in research and treatment of stroke over the last decade, this distinguished group of international authors—from societies whose members perform minimally invasive stroke treatments—felt that the time was right for a consensus on how to effectively treat and manage stroke patients,” said Hicks, the head of the division of diagnostic imaging at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. source: Society of Interventional Radiology