Stroke rehabilitation in adults: summary of updated NICE guidance

### What you need to know Globally, stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of death and disability combined.1 Around 100 000 people have strokes each year, and around 1.3 million people in the UK have survived a stroke.2 High quality rehabilitation can minimise the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social impacts for people who have had a stroke and their carers, and yield substantial cost savings to society.3 The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) first published guidance on stroke rehabilitation in adults in 2013.4 The guidance was updated in October 2023 to include appraisal of new evidence.5 This guideline summary covers selected new and updated recommendations in the 2023 update, and will focus on those most relevant to primary care and community rehabilitation settings. NICE recommendations are based on systematic reviews of best available evidence and explicit consideration of cost effectiveness. When minimal evidence is available, recommendations are based on the guideline development group's experience and opinion of what constitutes good practice. Evidence levels for the recommendations are given in italics in square brackets. Evidence certainty is based on GRADE criteria (box 1). Box 1 ### GRADE Working Group grades of evidenceRETURN TO TEXT