In 2008, the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) updated the European Stroke Initiative (EUSI) recommendations for the management of ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack, initially published in 2000 and updated in 2003 (1-3). Since then, the ESO has begun the process of implementing a new standardized system for the production and presentation of evidencebased clinical guidelines. The ESO guidelines committee agreed on two major developments: use of the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system (4-7); and the transition to a model in which several guideline documents deal with specific topics of interest called modules rather than a single document on a large topic.The GRADE system has a series of advantages over other systems that include clear separation between quality of evidence and strength of recommendation, explicit comprehensive criteria for downgrading and upgrading quality of evidence ratings, transparent process of moving from evidence to recommendations, explicit evaluation of the importance of outcomes of alternative management strategies, explicit acknowledgment of values and preferences, and clear pragmatic interpretation of strong versus weak recommendations for clinicians, patients, and policy makers (4-7). In summary, the GRADE approach starts with the formulation of the PICO (population, intervention, comparator, and outcome) questions. The selected outcomes are rated using a 9-degree scale (7-9: critical; 4-6: important; 1-3: of limited importance) and a search strategy is formulated. After a thorough literature search leading to the identification of all available evidence, eligible studies are then selected and their data are extracted and analyzed. The results can be imported into the GRADEPro software (8), allowing for efficient quality grading of the available evidence for each outcome and each clinical question. Then we determine the direction (either 'against' or 'for') and strength of the recommendation (either 'strong' or 'weak'), and finally the recommendation is formulated using a standardized language (4-7).The second major development in the ESO guidelines policy was to move from the classical model of a single guideline document on a major topic -e.g. management of ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, and hemorrhagic stroke -to subdivision of the major topic into focused modules. This enables the ESO Guidelines Committee to react quickly when new developments in a specific area of stroke medicine occur, and update recommendations on the related module with speed. With the