How the recommendation might affect practice The recommendation represents a change from current practice. However, because of the low unit cost of aspirin, the committee did not expect the recommendation to result in a significant resource impact. General practices will need to ensure they have adequate supplies of aspirin to enable immediate administration. Return to recommendation 2022 Initial management of suspected and confirmed transient ischaemic attack Why the committee made the recommendations Evidence showed that risk prediction scores (ABCD2 and ABCD3) used in isolation are poor at discriminating low and high risk of stroke after TIA. Adding imaging of the brain and carotid arteries to the risk scores (as is done in the ABCD2-I and ABCD3-I tools) modestly improves discrimination. However, appropriate imaging (including MRI) is not available in general practice or for paramedics, 2 of the key situations when these tools would be used. Arranging specialist assessment less urgently for some people based on a tool with poor discriminative ability for stroke risk has the potential for harm. Therefore, the committee agreed that risk scores should not be used. The committee agreed, based on their clinical experience and the limited predictive performance of risk scores, that all cases of suspected TIA should be considered as potentially high risk for stroke. Also, because there is no reliable diagnostic test for TIA (the risk stratification tools are not diagnostic tests), it is important to urgently confirm or refute the diagnosis of a suspected TIA with specialist opinion. This is particularly so because in practice, a significant proportion of suspected TIA (30% to 50%) will have an alternative diagnosis (that is, TIA-mimic). Therefore, it was agreed that everyone who has had a suspected TIA should have specialist assessment and investigation within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms. 