NICE CKS Round-Up — May 2026: Recent Updates for UK Primary Care

NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) are updated on a rolling basis, and several primary-care topics have changed recently. This round-up gives a one-line takeaway for each of the most clinically relevant, with a link to the source. The authoritative record is the NICE CKS site; this is a summary for awareness, not a substitute for the topic page itself.

This is the first in a recurring monthly series. We summarise the changes; we do not replace NICE, and clinical decisions remain the responsibility of the treating clinician.

The updates that matter this month

• Delirium. The prescribing-information section has been removed to underline that antipsychotic medication is not routinely recommended and should only be started on specialist assessment or advice. Takeaway: reach for non-pharmacological management first; treat any antipsychotic as a specialist-advised exception, not a default.
• DMARDs. Updated to align with the 2025 British Society for Rheumatology guideline on prescribing and monitoring conventional synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. Takeaway: re-check your shared-care monitoring intervals against the current BSR schedule.
• Compression stockings. Reviewed and aligned with the National Wound Care Strategy Programme recommendations and the Wounds UK best-practice statements on compression hosiery — including compression in heart-failure oedema and preventing recurrent leg ulceration. Takeaway: a good prompt to check your venous-compression and leg-ulcer pathway against current Wounds UK / NWCSP guidance.
• Morton's neuroma. No major change to the recommendations, but there's a new section summarising the complications that can occur if Morton's neuroma is left untreated. Takeaway: useful when counselling patients who are weighing up — or declining — referral and intervention.

Also reviewed this month with no major changes to recommendations: female- and male-pattern hair loss, head lice, and temporomandibular disorders (TMDs).

How to use this

CKS is a point-of-care reference, not a reading list — but the changes month to month are a useful signal of where guidance is moving. The fastest way to use this round-up is to scan the takeaways, then open the full CKS topic for anything that touches your regular caseload.

For the bigger picture on staying current across guidance and the journals, see our pillar guide on how to keep up with the medical literature.

A note on what this post is — and is not

This is a summary for awareness. It is not a substitute for the NICE CKS topic pages, which are the authoritative and current source. Always confirm the recommendation on the CKS topic page before acting on it. Clinical decisions remain the responsibility of the treating clinician.

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