Introduction to the International Cartilage Repair Society Recommendation Papers.

Abstract

The International Cartilage Repair Society (ICRS) has taken a leadership role in analyzing the current state of scientific development in order to provide recommendations, where possible, for clinical and preclinical studies in cartilage repair, as well as in assessments of patient-reported and tissue structural outcome measures. The result of this initiative is the publication in this volume of Cartilage of 4 recommendation papers and 1 additional recommendation paper in the January issue of 2011: Trattnig S, Winalski CS, Marlovits S, Jurvelin JS, Welsch GH, Potter HG. Magnetic resonance imaging of cartilage repair: a review. Cartilage. 2011;2:5-26. Mithoefer K, Saris DBF, Farr J, Kon E, Zaslav K, Cole B, Ranstam J, Yao J, Shive MS, Brittberg M. Guidelines for the design and conduct of clinical studies in knee articular cartilage repair: International Cartilage Repair Society recommendations based on current scientific evidence and standards of clinical care. Cartilage. 2011;2: 100-121. Roos EM, Engelhart L, Ranstam J, Anderson AF, Irrgang JJ, Marx R, Tegner Y, Davis AM. Patient-reported outcome instruments for use in patients with articular cartilage defects. Cartilage. 2011;2:122-136. Hurtig M, Buschmann MD, Fortier L, Hoemann CD, Hunziker EB, Jurvelin JS, Mainil-Varlet P, McIlwraith W, Sah RL, Whiteside RA. Preclinical studies for cartilage repair: recommendations from the International Cartilage Repair Society. Cartilage. 2011;2:137-153. Hoemann CD, Kandel R, Roberts S, Saris D, Creemers L, Manil-Varlet P, Methot S, Hollander A, Buschmann MD. Recommended guidelines for histological endpoints for cartilage repair studies in animal models and clinical trials. Cartilage. 2011;2:154-173. This series of publications addresses overall considerations in the design and execution of clinical studies (Mithoefer et al.) and preclinical studies (Hurtig et al.) as well as analyses and recommendations for patient-reported outcome measures of clinical benefit (Roos et al.) and structural histological (Hoemann et al.) and MRI (Trattnig et al.) methods available to evaluate the quality and quantity of repair tissue. Taken together, these documents represent an important accomplishment of the ICRS in regrouping its members to producing leading position papers that provide a basis for future progress in our field. These 5 publications represent consensus documents and recommendations of the ICRS. The authors were invited to participate by the ICRS board. The review process included the peer review process of the journal as well as an additional review by the ICRS board to ensure that a general consensus of the society was achieved. We believe that the readers of Cartilage will find these expert analyses and recommendations useful in their research for improved methods and products for cartilage repair. We hope that all involved benefit from this unique effort, and we truly hope that patients, payers, practitioners, and policy makers all use these documents to the benefit of the field of cartilage repair. On behalf of the ICRS board and the Cartilage editorial board,