American Heart Association/American Stroke Association 2010 guideline for the management of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage: What's new?

Until recently, intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) has been considered to be a devastating disease for which no or few effective therapeutic measures were available. However, based on recent studies showing that good medical care improves clinical outcome, the recently published guideline by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association indicates that ICH is indeed a treatable disease. The guideline updates the recommendations for the diagnosis and the management of spontaneous ICH, with a special emphasis on providing best medical care in an intensive care setting. In this paper, the new and modified recommendations of the recent guideline and a detailed comparison with the previously published 2007 guidelines are presented.