American College of Rheumatology guideline for managing patients with degenerative joint disease of the hand, knee, and hip

Reference

Kolasinski SL, Neogi T, Hochberg MC, et al. 2019 American College of Rheumatology/Arthritis Foundation guideline for the management of osteoarthritis of the hand, hip, and knee. Arthritis Rheumatol 2020;72(2):220-233.

Synopsis

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) convened a guideline development panel. This panel, many of whom reported ties to industry, followed an explicit process of identifying the key questions, conducting systematic literature reviews, and synthesizing recommendations based on the available data. Additionally, the ACR had a panel of patients and an intraprofessional voting panel of rheumatologists, an internist, occupational and physical therapists, and patients. On the basis of their own reviews of the available literature (rather than using systematic reviews conducted by other entities), the panel issued strong or conditional recommendations based on a 70% consensus among the voting panel members, typically according to the quality of the supporting data. The use of their own reviews rather than others is important in that some systematic reviews come to differing conclusions for some of their recommendations, such as intra-articular steroid injections. The panel made strong recommendations for a comprehensive approach that includes exercise, self-efficacy programs, weight loss, tai chi, and assistive devices (eg, canes, tibiofemoral knee braces, and thumb splints), as well as topical, oral, and intraarticular steroids (for knee and hip). The panel made conditional recommendations in favor of education, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other forms of exercise. Additionally, they made conditional recommendations in favor of taping, other types of splints and braces, acetaminophen, tramadol, duloxetine, chondroitin (only for the hand, but read on), topical capsaicin (knee), and acupuncture. They also made strong recommendations against the use of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (knee, hip), bisphosphonates, glucosamine, hydroxychloroquine, methotrexate, biologicals, platelet-rich plasma or stem cell injections, chondroitin (knee, hip), and intra-articular hyaluronic acid (hip). The panel also made conditional recommendations against many other measures, including chondroitin (hand… wait, what?!), hyaluronic acid injections (hand, knee), topical capsaicin (hand, hip), botulinum toxin, prolotherapy, colchicine, nontramadol opioids, fish oil, vitamin D, massage, and wedged insoles or modified shoes. Some of the negative recommendations were mainly based on a lack of reasonable quality evidence of benefit as opposed to an abundance of reasonable quality evidence of the absence of benefit. Stay tuned, as some of these areas will continue to evolve.