Stroke is an enormous public health problem. It is the third most common cause of death (causing 4.4 million deaths worldwide in 1990) and the most important cause of disability among adults (with an estimated prevalence of 0.6% population) in the world. It also imposes an enormous cost on the community, accounting for about 5% of all health service costs.

During the past decade, several promising treatments for stroke have been evaluated by means of the most reliable methods – the randomised-controlled trial (RCT) and the systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs – providing a reasonably reliable body of evidence for the efficacy and safety of several treatments for stroke. In order for these advances to make an important difference to patient outcome and the health of nations, they need to be translated into practice. One way to facilitate this is by increasing the access to best evidence for stroke care practitioners and consumers. At present, these data are available at several sites including the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and Evidence-Based Medicine publications and web sites such as Clinical Evidence http://www.clinicalevidence.org/, EBM Guidelines http://www.ebm-guidelines.com/ and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network http://www.sign.ac.uk/guidelines/index.html. Furthermore, they are regularly updated to incorporate new evidence as it arises. However, none are dedicated in a single corpus specifically for clinicians who manage stroke patients and their families.

The aim of this book is to provide stroke clinicians (and their patients and families), with ready access to the optimal evidence to guide best practice in acute stroke treatment and (secondary) prevention of recurrent serious vascular events.