Osteoarthritis: Which Treatments Work and Wh...( International society develops 25 t...),Health

International society develops 25 treatment recommendations for knee and

hip osteoarthritis Findings appear in the February issue of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage

MT. LAUREL, N.J., Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- A newly released set of treatment recommendations for knee and hip osteoarthritis may help millions of people worldwide who live in pain due to inconsistent treatment approaches and confusion about what therapies are most effective.

The 25 evidence-based, expert-consensus recommendations appear in the February issue of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage and can be found at http://www.oarsi.org.

These are the first evidence-based recommendations developed by a committee that was brought together two years ago by the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI). The goals were (1) to review all of the published national and regional treatment guidelines together with the more recent evidence from clinical trials and (2) to produce a single set of up-to-date, evidence-based recommendations for the worldwide treatment of knee and hip osteoarthritis.

"What the committee did was take the scientifically proven commonalities it found in the international literature, evaluate the level of scientific evidence, propose a strength of recommendation for each modality, and condense them into one comprehensive 'playbook' of what works," says OARSI President Dr. Steve Abramson, director of Rheumatology and professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine.

The first of OARSI's 25 evidence-based recommendations is that optimal treatment requires both nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic modalities. The remaining 24 recommendations fall into three categories -- nonpharmacologic, pharmacologic and surgical.

The effectiveness of each recommendation is associated with a level of scientific evidence available to support it. The higher the level
'/>"/>