Update on the use of osteoarthritis-specific outcome measures

Osteoarthritis is the single most important cause of disability and limitation of activity of elderly people in the UK. Although joint replacement is now commonplace for hips and increasingly so for knees, pharmacological management continues to be important. In this context, it is necessary to identify valid and acceptable outcome measures to enable progress in treating osteoarthritis to be evaluated. Such measures should benefit not only clinicians managing osteoarthritis and purchasers of healthcare for this condition, but, ultimately also patients through improved forms of treatment. This paper briefly reviews and provides an update on the use of osteoarthritis-specific health and functional status and generic health status outcome measures in health services research and technology assessment. Other equally important clinical outcome measures, such as biochemical markers, radiographic assessment and joint imaging, are not discussed.