Guidelines for managing severe traumatic brain injury continue to evolve

New evidence continues to drive the evolution of guideline recommendations for the medical management of patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). A comprehensive look at how the four editions of the Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines for managing severe TBI have become a global standard for treating patients and key challenges and goals for the future are featured in an article published in Journal of Neurotrauma.

"Evolution of Evidence and Guideline Recommendations for the Medical Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury" was coauthored by Victor Volovici, Erasmus MC Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and colleagues from Erasmus MC Rotterdam, Leiden University Medical Center (The Netherlands), and Antwerp University Hospital and University of Antwerp (Belgium). The authors call for the TBI research community to generate more high-quality evidence. The growing evidence base then needs to be responsibly translated into clinically applicable recommendations that will benefit patients.

"This paper provides an excellent look at the continuing refinement of our processes for evaluating published evidence and then incorporating that evidence into clinical guidelines," said Alex Valadka, Deputy Editor of Journal of Neurotrauma. "It's also important to note that recommendations based on the strongest evidence withstand the test of time to a greater extent than recommendations based on lower-quality studies. This work is of interest to anyone who uses clinical guidelines for patient care, research, education, quality improvement, or creation of policies and procedures."