Italian Stroke Guidelines (SPREAD): evidence and clinical practice.

Evidence-based medicine's aims are to retrieve, screen and compound the best external evidence with the experience of the physician, and to best respond to the specific medical need of each individual patient. Clinical questions are better answered when good systematic reviews of randomised trials or good randomised clinical trials are available. On the other hand, in a clinical scenario, difficulties in applying the evidence may be amplified due to variability of disease conditions, feasibility of intervention and patient's preferences. Guidelines are recommendations, based as much as possible on evidence, aimed at supporting clinical judgement/diagnostic skills/treatment decisions in everyday practice. Guidelines may improve the quality of care received by the patient and may contribute towards better consistency of care in a definite geographical area. However, guidelines risk reducing physician skills to critically appraising the evidence. In a clinical scenario, guidelines do not always provide substantial help, especially when no conclusive evidence supports them. The Italian Stroke Guidelines (SPREAD) have contributed towards more evidence-based and better harmonised stroke care in Italy. However, the number of high grade recommendations in SPREAD is still limited. Professionals should not forget that clinical decisions often reflect several issues, not only scientific ones, including personal experience, applicability of intervention and patient's preferences.