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Recent changes to UK newborn resuscitation guidelines
  1. Jonathan Wyllie
  1. Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, UK
  1. Correspondence to Jonathan Wyllie, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, The James Cook University Hospital, Marton Road, Middlesbrough TS4 3BW, UK; jonathan.wyllie{at}stees.nhs.uk

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The new UK newborn resuscitation guidelines were published online on the 18th of October 20101 simultaneously with the European guidelines.2 Both are based upon evidence derived from a critical evaluation of relevant scientific publications over the preceding 5 years3 4 organised and co-ordinated by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR), with simultaneous publication of guidelines and evidence.1,,5 This article summarises both the process and changes.

Changing guidelines via the ILCOR process

Representatives of the American Heart Association, the European Resuscitation Council, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Resuscitation Council of South Africa founded the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) in 1992. Other organisations subsequently joined and in 1995 the task force of ILCOR established a neonatal subgroup. After the 2005 ILCOR publication,6 this subgroup became an autonomous neonatal task force.

For 2010, as with the previous evidence evaluation processes, the specific questions to be evaluated were informed by priorities identified by task forces and individual councils/organisations, review of the research gaps analysis and a thorough systematic approach called ‘evidence mapping’ based on the previous guidelines.7 The questions were structured into a standardised format (PICO: population/patient, intervention, comparison, outcome; http://www.cebm.net/?o=1036).8 Each question was allocated to two worksheet authors selected to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Worksheets were reviewed by the neonatal task force chair and evidence evaluation experts whose feedback guided subsequent revision, and they were subsequently posted on the ILCOR and American Heart Association websites. They were open to comment, which informed further evaluation and revision.

From this evidence, consensus statements on …

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Footnotes

  • Competing interests The author was the co-chair of the neonatal section of ILCOR and was a member of the editorial board responsible for the ILCOR consensus document. He is also chair of the UK Resuscitation Council's Newborn Life Support (NLS) course. He was co-author of the European Resuscitation Council Newborn Resuscitation Guidelines 2010 and the Resuscitation Council (UK) Newborn Resuscitation Guidelines 2010.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.