ABSTRACT
There are three key steps to developing guidelines that are based on the best available evidence: • Form an answerable question. This requires clinical decisions to be broken
down into specific components that can then be addressed. So rather than ‘Should patients in atrial fibrillation be anticoagulated?’ in the development of stroke prevention guidelines, the question should be ‘Will the benefits of warfarin in reducing the risk of stroke outweigh the harm from bleeding in the secondary prevention of stroke?’ The latter defines the patient group, the treatment, the desired outcome and the potential harm.
