One of the hardest jobs is to adjudicate between different consensus statements

Besides meta-analyses of clinical trials, one of the fashions in clinical management at the end of the 20th century is consensus statements. To produce these statements, experts in the subject, and others who consider themselves to be so, meet for a few hours in attractive places such as airports. Stroke management has not escaped this plethora of consensus statements, the most recent being that based on a conference held at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh immediately before the seventh European Stroke Conference.1 Other recent consensus conferences have been held by the European Stroke Council, which led to the Helsingborg Declaration on Stroke Management, including targets for the year 2005,2 the …