title: Relevant baseline characteristics for describing patients with knee osteoarthritis: results from a Delphi survey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Inclusion/exclusion criteria and baseline characteristics are essential for assessing the applicability of trial results to a given patient and the comparability of study populations for meta-analyses. This Delphi survey aimed to generate a set of baseline characteristics for describing patients with knee osteoarthritis enrolled in clinical studies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Survey participants comprised clinical experts (n = 23; mean age 54 y; from 4 continents) that had authored at least two randomized trials on knee osteoarthritis. First, given a prepared list of baseline patient characteristics, the experts were asked to add characteristics they considered important for assessing comparability of patient populations in different trials that evaluated the efficacy of non-surgical interventions for treating knee osteoarthritis. Next, they were asked to rate the importance of each characteristic, on a scale of 0 (not important) to 10 (highly important), according to three outcome categories: pain, function, and structure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants identified 121 baseline characteristics. A rating ≥7 points was assigned to 39 characteristics (e.g., age, depression, global knee pain, daily dose of pain killers, Kellgren-Lawrence grading); of these, 20 were related to pain, 15 to function, and 23 to structural outcomes. Global knee pain was the only baseline characteristic that fulfilled among experts the predefined consensus criteria.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Experts identified a large number of characteristics for describing patients with knee osteoarthritis. Disagreement and uncertainty prevailed over the relevance of these characteristics. Our findings justified further efforts to define appropriate, broadly acceptable sets of baseline characteristics for describing patients with knee osteoarthritis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rheumatology, University Hospital of Zurich, Gloriastrasse 25, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland. lukas.wildi@usz.ch.
authors.forename: Lukas M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Wildi
authors.forename: Anita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hensel
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wertli
authors.forename: Beat A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Michel
authors.forename: Johann
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Steurer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003697:Delphi Technique; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020370:Osteoarthritis, Knee; D012219:Rheumatology / Q000592:standards*