Guidelines Committee
Specialists in Evidence Evaluation and Clinical Recommendations
The Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER) Initiative brings together distinguished experts in veterinary resuscitation science with professional contributors from other disciplines and will employ a process similar to that used to generate the American Heart Association guidelines for CPR in people. The human CPR guidelines are developed through the work of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR), a working group composed of members of a number of international organizations that conducts in-depth standardized literature reviews targeted at hundreds of individual issues in emergency cardiac care. Each issue is evaluated using GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation), a standardized evidence evaluation method. The method is used to formulate a final consensus statement on CPR, which regional organizations (e.g., AHA) utilize to generate regional guidelines.
2024 Guidelines Update
The first RECOVER CPR guidelines, published in 2012, were comprised of five domains: (1) Preparedness and Prevention; (2) Basic Life Support; (3) Advanced Life Support; (4) Monitoring; (5) Post Cardiac Arrest Care. The 2024 RECOVER CPR Guidelines process includes these same 5 Domains as well as 3 new ones: 6) Newborn Resuscitation; 7) Large Animal; and 8) First Aid.
For the 2024 RECOVER update, each domain has a at minimum 2 Chairs who are responsible for identifying and evaluating a series of specific key issues. Domain Chairs worked closely with Information Specialists to develop appropriate search strategies for each issue, and articles were retrieved from major human and veterinary medical databases using these strategies. For each key issue, 1-2 Evidence Evaluators were assigned to complete evidence evaluation using the GRADE system on a purpose-designed web-based system. The Domain Chairs used the Evidence Evaluators’ input to create an Evidence Profile Worksheet for each question. The RECOVER Initiative Co-Chairs then edited these worksheets and generated Treatment Recommendations. Treatment recommendations for the Basic Life Support, Advanced Life Support, and Monitoring Domains were released for broad stakeholder comment for 4 weeks in August 2023. The finalized 2024 RECOVER CPR Guidelines, Methods, and the BLS, ALS, and Monitoring Domain papers will be published and released in Q2 of 2024.
RECOVER 2024 Guidelines Committee
RECOVER Initiative Co-Chairs
Manuel Boller, Dr. med. vet., MTR, DACVECC
Jamie M. Burkitt-Creedon, DVM, DACVECC
Dan Fletcher, PhD, DVM, DACVECC
2024 RECOVER Domains and Associated Chairs
Prevention and Preparedness
- Domain Chair: Maureen McMichael, DVM, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Jennifer Herring, DVM, MS, DACVECC
Basic Life Support
- Domain Chair: Kate Hopper, BVSc, MVS, PhD, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Steven Epstein, DVM, DACVECC
Advanced Life Support
- Domain Chair: Elizabeth Rozanski, DVM, DACVIM, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Gareth Buckley, MA, VetMB, DECVECC, DACVECC
Monitoring
- Domain Chair: Ben Brainard, VMD, DACVAA, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Selena Lane, DVM, DACVECC
Post-cardiac Arrest Care
- Domain Chair: Joanna Goic, DVM, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Hendrik Lehmann, Dr med vet, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Rebecca Walton, DVM, DACVECC
Large Animal
- Domain Chair: Gayle Hallowell, MA VetMB, PhD, Cert AVP (Veterinary Anaesthesia), DipACVECC, DipACVIM, PFHEA, FRCVS
- Domain Co-chair: Mark Bowen, BVetMed MMedSci PhD CertVA CertEM(IntMed) DipACVIM-LAIM PFHEA FRCVS
Newborn Resuscitation
- Domain Chair: Christopher Byers, DVM, DACVECC, DACVIM (SAIM), CVJ
- Domain Co-chair: Kate Farrell, DVM, DACVECC
- Domain Advisor: Autumn Davidson, DVM, MS, DACVIM
First Aid
- Domain Chair: Debbie Mandell, VMD, DACVECC
- Domain Co-chair: Vince Thawley, VMD, DACVECC
