2026 Guideline for the Early Management of Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke

Dr. Andy Southerland and Dr. Shyam Prabhakaran explain the significance of these guidelines and why they are important. 

Show citation: 

Prabhakaran S, Gonzalez NR, Zachrison KS, et al. 2026 Guideline for the Early Management of Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke: A Guideline From the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. Stroke. Published online January 26, 2026. doi:10.1161/STR.0000000000000513 

Show transcript: 

Dr. Andy Southerland:

Hello everyone. This is Andy Southerland from the University of Virginia. And for this week's Neurology Minute, I've just been speaking with my colleague, Shyam Prabhakaran, from the University of Chicago, who was the Chair of the 2026 AHA/ASA guidelines for the early management of patients with Acute Ischemic stroke published in the January 2026 online version of the journal, Stroke. So Shyam, in our brief Neurology Minute today, why don't you just give a plea about why these guidelines are so important?

Dr. Shyam Prabhakaran:

Thanks, Andy. These guidelines are the first guidelines since 2019, so a lot has happened. So when you look at these guidelines, you'll see a lot of new recommendations. In fact, I think the majority have been revised in some way or another. And I'd point to the actual guideline document, which is in the journal Stroke online January '26, and the print version will be for the March edition of the journal Stroke.

In addition to that, I'd say because you want to have interpretability and ease of practice, there are a bunch of derivatives on the AHA website that are very useful. They include case studies, they include figures and workflows that could be really useful for you to have these conversations. And there's even a slide deck that was prepared by our AHA ambassadors. There are these young whippersnappers that did a great job putting together a slide deck for anyone to use. They can use that to have conversations locally or anywhere they want. I encourage people, read the guidelines, but then also use the derivative products that people spent a lot of time on developing.

Dr. Andy Southerland:

Thank you, Shyam. I think that's a great message from the Chair of the writing group, that when you look at these guidelines, they can seem daunting. But the way you all have provided all these additional resources and analogs for people to interpret it and apply it in their own stroke centers and practice, I think folks definitely will be running out to do that, just to seek out the full guideline, and let's apply all this great new evidence to better care for our patients. So Shyam, thanks again for joining us for this week's Neurology Minute.