Antimicrobial stewardship: systems and processes for effective antimicrobial medicine use

Assessing the evidence

For this guideline, we checked any policy or other guidance documents that had been issued or updated since NICE guideline NG15 was published. We 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. We additionally 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 (see appendix A).

The policy, Cochrane reviews and NIHR Signals we 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 (see views of topic experts).

We also checked for any relevant ongoing studies, and the impact of any publications arising from these in future will be monitored.

Equalities

No equalities issues were identified during the surveillance process.

Overall decision

After considering the evidence described above as well as the views of topic experts and stakeholders, we propose to not update this guideline.

See how we made the decision for further information.