This guideline covers antenatal care for all pregnant women with complex social factors (particularly alcohol or drug misuse, recent migrant or asylum seeker status, difficulty reading or speaking English, aged under 20, domestic abuse). It offers advice on improving access to care, maintaining contact with antenatal carers, and additional information and support for these women.
This guideline covers diagnosing and treating delirium in people aged 18 and over in hospital and in long-term residential care or a nursing home. It also covers identifying people at risk of developing delirium in these settings and preventing onset. It aims to improve diagnosis of delirium and reduce hospital stays and complications.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing secondary cancers in people aged 18 and over when the site of the primary cancer is unknown. This includes people who have had treatment for cancer before. It aims to improve quality of life by offering advice on tests for identifying the site of the primary cancer and options for managing the person’s condition when this cannot be found.
This guideline covers the assessment, preparation, training and monitoring needed when using sedation in people aged under 19. It aims to help healthcare professionals decide when sedation is the most clinically and cost effective option for reducing pain and anxiety during operations for children and young people.
This guideline covers assessing and managing people aged 14 years and over with coexisting severe mental illness (psychosis) and substance misuse. It aims to help healthcare professionals guide people with psychosis with coexisting substance misuse to stabilise, reduce or stop their substance misuse, to improve treatment adherence and outcomes, and to enhance their lives.
This guideline covers assessing and managing chronic hepatitis B in children, young people and adults. It aims to improve care for people with hepatitis B by specifying which tests and treatments to use for people of different ages and with different disease severities.
This guideline covers recognising, assessing and treating social anxiety disorder (also known as ‘social phobia’) in children and young people (from school age to 17 years) and adults (aged 18 years and older). It aims to improve symptoms, educational, occupational and social functioning, and quality of life in people with social anxiety disorder.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing suspected or confirmed autism spectrum disorder (autism, Asperger’s syndrome and atypical autism) in people aged 18 and over. It aims to improve access and engagement with interventions and services, and the experience of care, for people with autism.
This guideline covers preventing and controlling healthcare-associated infections in children, young people and adults in primary and community care settings. It provides a blueprint for the infection prevention and control precautions that should be applied by everyone involved in delivering NHS care and treatment.
This guideline covers the components of a good patient experience. It aims to make sure that all adults using NHS services have the best possible experience of care.
This guideline covers identifying people who wish to donate their organs after their death. It offers advice on how to approach families and carers of people who are nearing the end of life and how to seek consent for organ donation. It aims to promote discussion of organ donation as part of end-of-life care and to increase the number of organs available for people waiting for a transplant.
This guideline covers assessment and referral for anaphylaxis. It aims to improve the quality of care for people with suspected anaphylaxis by detailing the assessments that are needed and recommending referral to specialist allergy services.
This guideline covers the longer-term psychological treatment and management of self-harm in people aged 8 and over. It aims to improve the quality of care and support for people who self harm and covers both single and recurrent episodes of self-harm.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing colorectal (bowel) cancer in people aged 18 and over. It aims to improve quality of life and survival for adults with colorectal cancer through early diagnosis and staging, management of local disease according to risk of recurrence (high, moderate, low) and management of secondary tumours (metastatic disease).
This guideline covers managing hyperglycaemia in the first 48 hours for adults admitted to hospital for acute coronary syndromes. It aims to improve initial management of hyperglycaemia and ensure that adults are given advice on their diabetes risk and how to reduce it.
This guideline covers managing stable angina in people aged 18 and over. It outlines the importance of addressing the person’s concerns about stable angina and the roles of medical therapy and revascularisation.
This guideline covers care for people aged 18 and over with common mental health problems, with a focus on primary care. It aims to improve access to services for adults and how mental health problems are identified and assessed, and makes recommendations on local care pathways.
This guideline covers using colonoscopy to check for signs of bowel cancer in people aged 18 and over with ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease (types of inflammatory bowel disease) or adenomas (also known as polyps). It aims to prevent cancer and prolong life by offering advice on identifying early bowel cancer in adults most at risk.
This guideline covers assessing and managing food allergy in children and young people under 19. It aims to improve symptoms such as faltering growth and eczema by offering advice on how to identify food allergy and when to refer to secondary or specialist care.
This guideline covers advice on the diagnosis and management of tension-type headache, migraine (including migraine with aura and menstrual-related migraine), cluster headache and medication overuse headache in young people (aged 12 years and older) and adults. It aims to improve the recognition and management of headaches, with more targeted treatment to improve the quality of life for people with headaches, and to reduce unnecessary investigations.
This guideline covers managing acute painful sickle cell episodes in children, young people and adults who present at hospital, from presentation until when they are discharged. It aims to reduce variation in how acute episodes are managed in hospital, focusing on effective, prompt and safe pain relief.
This guideline covers preventing infection within 72 hours of birth in healthy babies, treating pregnant women whose baby is at risk, and caring for babies who have a suspected or confirmed infection. It aims to reduce delays in recognising and treating sick babies and prevent unnecessary use of antibiotics.
This guideline covers the diagnosis and management of venous thromboembolic diseases in adults (aged 18 and over), and the role of thrombophilia testing. It aims to clarify which diagnostic tests should be used, reduce variation in pharmacological therapies, and provide guidance on when thrombophilia testing is useful.
This guideline covers managing hip fracture in adults. It aims to improve care from the time people aged 18 and over are admitted to hospital through to when they return to the community. Recommendations emphasise the importance of early surgery and coordinating care through a multidisciplinary hip fracture programme to help people recover faster and regain their mobility.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in people aged 18 and over. Rapid changes in diagnostic methods, endovascular treatments and vascular services associated with new specialties in surgery and interventional radiology have resulted in considerable uncertainty and variation in practice. This guideline aims to resolve that uncertainty and variation.
This guideline covers how to help people return to work after long-term sickness absence, reduce recurring sickness absence, and help prevent people moving from short-term to long-term sickness absence.
This guideline covers how to increase uptake of the free flu vaccination among people who are eligible. It describes ways to increase awareness and how to use all opportunities in primary and secondary care to identify people who should be encouraged to have the vaccination.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for preventing recurrent urinary tract infections in children, young people and adults who do not have a catheter. It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute pyelonephritis (upper urinary tract infection) in children, young people and adults who do not have a catheter. It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute prostatitis. It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for lower urinary tract infection (also called cystitis) in children, young people and adults who do not have a catheter. It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline covers ways to reduce suicide and help people bereaved or affected by suicides. It aims to:
This guideline covers assessing and managing urinary incontinence in children, young people and adults with neurological disease. It aims to improve care by recommending specific treatments based on what symptoms and neurological conditions people have.
This guideline covers managing hyperphosphataemia in children, young people and adults with stage 4 or 5 chronic kidney disease. It makes recommendations on dietary management and phosphate binders, to reduce variation in care and the risk of hyperparathyroidism for people with chronic kidney disease.
This guideline covers care and treatment of people aged 18 and over with a type of heart attack known as spontaneous onset of myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation (STEMI). It aims to ensure that adults with STEMI are assessed and treated as soon as possible to minimise the damage to their heart. It also aims to help commissioners and healthcare professionals configure services so that people with STEMI can have the best outcomes.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing varicose veins in people aged 18 and over. It aims to ensure that people understand the options for treating varicose veins and that healthcare professionals know when to refer people for specialist assessment and treatment.
This guideline covers preventing, detecting, and managing acute kidney injury in children (aged above 1 month and below 12 years), young people (aged 12 to 17 years) and adults (aged 18 years or older). It aims to improve assessment and detection by non-specialist clinicians, and specifies when they should refer people to specialist services. This will reduce the chance of death or complications for people at risk of acute kidney injury.
This guideline covers children and young people with autism spectrum disorder (across the full range of intellectual ability) from birth until their 19th birthday. It covers the different ways that health and social care professionals can provide support, treatment and help for children and young people with autism, and their families and carers, from the early years through to their transition into young adult life.
This guideline covers how to improve the physical environment to encourage and support physical activity. The aim is to increase the general population’s physical activity levels.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute sore throat. It aims to limit antibiotic use and reduce antimicrobial resistance. Acute sore throat is often caused by a virus, lasts for about a week, and most people get better without antibiotics. Withholding antibiotics rarely leads to complications.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute otitis media (ear infection). It aims to limit antibiotic use and reduce antimicrobial resistance. Acute otitis media can be caused by viruses or bacteria. It lasts for about a week, and most children get better in 3 days without antibiotics. Serious complications are rare.
This guideline covers how community pharmacies can help maintain and improve people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing, including people with a long-term condition. It aims to encourage more people to use community pharmacies by integrating them within existing health and care pathways and ensuring they offer standard services and a consistent approach. It requires a collaborative approach from individual pharmacies and their representatives, local authorities and other commissioners.
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing bronchiolitis in children. It aims to help healthcare professionals diagnose bronchiolitis and identify if children should be cared for at home or in hospital. It describes treatments and interventions that can be used to help with the symptoms of bronchiolitis.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for catheter-associated urinary tract infection in children, young people and adults. It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline covers identifying and managing depression in children and young people aged 5 to 18 years. Based on the stepped-care model, it aims to improve recognition and assessment and promote effective treatments for mild and moderate to severe depression.
This guideline covers preventing and managing foot problems in children, young people and adults with diabetes. It aims to reduce variation in practice, including antibiotic prescribing for diabetic foot infections.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for acute cough associated with an upper respiratory tract infection or acute bronchitis in adults, young people and children. It aims to limit antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline sets out an antimicrobial prescribing strategy for managing and preventing acute exacerbations of bronchiectasis (non-cystic fibrosis). It aims to optimise antibiotic use and reduce antibiotic resistance.
This guideline covers investigating and managing gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) and dyspepsia in people aged 18 and over. It aims to improve the treatment of GORD and dyspepsia by making detailed recommendations on Helicobacter pylori eradication, and specifying when to consider laparoscopic fundoplication and referral to specialist services.