The OPTIKNEE Group is Working to Prevent Osteoarthritis After Knee Injury

 

 

OPTIKNEE is an international group of over ~40 scientists, patients and health care professionals working to address prevention of osteoarthritis after a knee injury. Knee injuries can be life-altering. They may eventually lead to osteoarthritis which has a crippling effect on healthcare systems globally. Despite these facts, there is little attention given to the prevention of knee osteoarthritis after injury.

 

Principal Investigator

Jackie Whittaker, BScPT, PhD, Senior Scientist, Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation, Arthritis Research Canada (University of British Columbia)

 

Preventing Osteoarthritis after a knee injury

Over the last three years The OPTIKNEE group, led by Dr. Jackie Whittaker, has combined evidence from ~230 studies including >133,000 people with knee injuries to identify key findings within several areas of research in 7 systematic reviews. These 7 systematic reviews also informed a consensus process that made 8 recommendations for health care after knee injury and 6 recommendations for future research aimed at preventing knee osteoarthritis after injury. The clinical recommendations will ensure the best care of patients following a traumatic knee injury so that they don’t develop osteoarthritis. The research recommendations both lay the foundation for future research to use similar methods and data so that the results of individual studies can be easily combined and to encourage collaboration across researchers to use collective resources that will overcome common barriers.

OPTIKNEE emerged out of a meeting focused on setting priorities for preventing osteoarthritis after knee injury that was held before the Osteoarthritis Research Society International Congress (Toronto 2019) made possible by funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute for Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis. Six of the 7 reviews and the consensus paper will be published together as the last issue of the prestigious British Journal of Sports Medicine (99th percentile of orthopaedic and sports medicine journal, 1/284, 2022 impact factor 18.473) for 2022. This outputs of the OPTIKNEE group are expected to change the face of care for persons that experience a traumatic knee injury, and drive innovation.