Position Statements

The ASNM has as its mission, “to improve patient outcomes through the application of neurophysiological monitoring.” The ASNM actualizes its mission by a number of means including the development of guidelines and position statements that define both the technical and professional interpretive aspects of neurophysiological monitoring. Our aim is to provide practitioners and institutions with living documents that will assist in making choices for optimizing patient care.

The American Society of Neurophysiological Monitoring (ASNM) periodically publishes these Clinical Practice Guidelines and Position Statements consistent with the Institute of Medicine . These documents are defined consistent with the National Guidelines Clearinghouse guidance “Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.” The ASNM Standards and Guidelines Committee recognizes three possible approaches to the guideline-writing task: 1) an evidence based review, 2) a summary methodological review based on a national plebiscite, or 3) construction of a patient-centered method drawing upon the best aspects of the extant IONM practice models.

The ASNM Clinical Practice Guidelines are heterogeneous evidence-based clinical guidance documents; as in terminology utilized in describing and/or labeling the Clinical Practice Guidelines may use phrases “guideline”, “position statement”, “protocol”, “pathway”, “standard” in different context by different guideline developers in an effort to allow the author’s most relevant terminology. The ASNM Clinical Practice Guidelines are eligible for publication regardless of the terminology label provided the Clinical Practice Guidelines are consistent with the ASNM Position Statements and key components recommended by Guidelines International Network.

The ASNM Clinical Practice Guidelines recognize evolving technologies, newly acquired knowledge and clinical practice patterns warrant periodic review and update of the previously published Guidelines.

The ASNM recognizes that other organizations will have an interest in these position statements, and we want the leadership and members of these organizations to become partners in the statement drafting process. Thus, we send requests to organizations that have similar interests to make these statements available to their memberships. Further, we make the position papers available here on our web site. We invite you to download these documents, and we welcome you to make comments to the Guidelines Committee regarding their content.

Lanjun Guo, MD, MSc, DABNM, FASNM
ASNM Board Liaison

Clinical Practice Guideline We Can Trust, Institute of Medicine (March, 2011)
National Guidelines Clearinghouse, AHRQ, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Morledge and Stecker, Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing (2006) 20: 43–46
Qaseem, et al. Ann Intern Med. (2012); 156: 525-531