NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) check their guidelines regularly to ensure they remain up to date. They have decided not to update the guideline on antimicrobial stewardship at this time. NICE based the decision on surveillance 2 years after the publication of NICE’s guideline on antimicrobial stewardship (NICE guideline NG15) in 2015.
Reason for the decision
Assessing the evidence
For this guideline, NICE checked any policy or other guidance documents that had been issued or updated since NICE guideline NG15 was published. They also checked any Cochrane reviews related to the guideline – this included any updates to the 4 Cochrane reviews used to inform the recommendations during development of the guideline, as well as any new Cochrane reviews published since October 2014 when the original search took place. In addition, NICE also checked for any relevant National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Signals. Each piece of evidence was checked against the guideline recommendations to assess any potential impact.
The policy, Cochrane reviews and NIHR Signals NICE examined did not indicate a need to update the guideline, therefore we did not undertake a formal evidence review. Furthermore, members of the original guideline committee were in agreement that there had been no substantial changes to the evidence base that would affect the guideline at this point .
NICE also checked for any relevant ongoing studies, and the impact of any publications arising from these in future will be monitored.
Overall decision
After considering the evidence described above as well as the views of topic experts and stakeholders, NICE proposes to not update this guideline.
See how NICE made the decision for further information
