The Use of Guidelines for Managing and Treating Osteoarthritis

Guidelines represent a tool for guiding and, more importantly, helping clinical practice. However, their goals, importance and practical usefulness are debated. Clinical guidelines express expert opinion, mixed with evidence-based practice, but the relative contribution of each are often difficult to discuss. Practice guidelines for osteoarthritis deal with classification and diagnosis of this heterogeneous condition using clinical and imaging criteria, and describe methodology for clinical outcome measurements. Therapeutic guidelines for osteoarthritis of the hip and knee may help the clinical decision-making process, integrating suggestions for pharmacological and nonpharmacological forms of treatment. In future, the construct and content validity of the rheumatology guidelines, as well as their practicability and clinical utility should be analytically considered and assessed by randomised, controlled trials in general medical practice.