Lack of agreement in experts’ classification of patients with early-stage knee osteoarthritis

Abstract

Purpose: Current classification criteria for knee osteoarthritis (OA) typically define patients at a relatively late disease stage with substantial structural changes and biomechanical derangement. Earlier identification of patients may be more suitable to test interventions that potentially slow down structural disease progression and improve patient outcomes. However, there is a lack of consensus on classification of patients with symptomatic early-stage knee OA (EsKOA). The use of such classification criteria would also allow more efficient future meta-analyses and other comparisons of results across studies.