Recently, the Canadian Journal of Cardiology published an article by our Guidelines Executive Committee that outlines the plan for our new guidelines. Up until 2021, Hypertension Canada would publish its guidelines on an annual basis, but because of organizational restructuring in 2020, the decision was made to reduce the frequency with which the guidelines are developed and released. Because of this, we have not released new guidelines since 2020.
Late last year, Hypertension Canada put together a taskforce to interview those who were interested in being the new guidelines Co-Chairs. The task force selected Drs. Remi Goupil and Greg Hundemer as the new Co-Chairs earlier this year and work started on the new guidelines right away. Both the members of the Guidelines Executive Committee and the Primary Care Guidelines Subcommittee were chosen in the summer.
The new CJC article outlines the process that our Co-Chairs have developed for our guidelines development, where we will be creating two sets of guidelines: primary care and comprehensive guidelines. The Primary Care Guidelines Subcommittee has now completed work on the primary care guidelines and we recently completed the public review phase, where we asked for feedback from primary care providers. We want to sincerely thank all of you who sent in your feedback to us! We’ve taken all of the feedback we received and have used it to create an FAQ that will be included in the publication.
Our guidelines work continues with both the comprehensive guidelines and the patient guidelines. Our Guidelines Executive Committee recently formed the Patient Guidelines Subcommittee, which will be adapting the primary care guidelines into an educational tool for patients. For the comprehensive guidelines, our Guidelines Executive Committee is developing a process to determine which topics will be a priority for future evidence synthesis work. There is plenty of exciting work that is being done, so be sure to keep an eye on your inbox for future updates!