A critique of the 2000 update of the American College of Rheumatology recommendations for management of hip and knee osteoarthritis

✍ Scribed by Kenneth D. Brandt

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 63 KB
• Volume: 44
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/1529-0131(200110)44:10<2451::aid-art416>3.0.co;2-f

✦ Synopsis

little information on methodology. They cite abstracts (which seems hard to defend) and provide no quality assessments or estimates of effect sizes or NNT. The lack of a comprehensive search strategy and of quality assessments and the inclusion of abstracts are particularly worrying given that it is likely this will lead to biases (4).

The ACR guidelines contrast sharply in their methodologic approach with that used by the European group (5) and by my own group, which has reviewed the literature for Clinical Evidence (6). Differences in emphasis and conclusions are apparent in these different publications, and these are probably due to the absence of proper methodology in development of the ACR guidelines.