Evidence Review for Preventing Osteoarthritis After an Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury: An Osteoarthritis Action Alliance Consensus Statement

Context: The Osteoarthritis Action Alliance formed a secondary prevention task group to develop a consensus on secondary prevention recommendations to reduce the risk of osteoarthritis after a knee injury. Objective: Our goal was to provide clinicians with secondary prevention recommendations that are intended to reduce the risk of osteoarthritis after a person has sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury. Specifically, this manuscript describes our methods, literature reviews, and dissenting opinions to elaborate on the rationale for our recommendations and to identify critical gaps. Design: Consensus process. Setting: Virtual video conference calls and online voting. Patients or Other Participants: The Secondary Prevention Task Group consisted of 29 members from various clinical backgrounds. Main Outcome Measure(s): The group initially convened online in August 2020 to discuss the target population, goals, and key topics. After a second call, the task group divided into 9 subgroups to draft the recommendations and supportive text for crucial content areas. Twenty-one members completed 2 rounds of voting and revising the recommendations and supportive text between February and April 2021. A virtual meeting was held to review the wording of the recommendations and obtain final votes. We defined consensus as .80% of voting members supporting a proposed recommendation. Results: The group achieved consensus on 15 of 16 recommendations. The recommendations address patient education, exercise and rehabilitation, psychological skills training, graded-exposure therapy, cognitive-behavioral counseling (lacked consensus), outcomes to monitor, secondary injury prevention, system-level social support, leveraging technology, and coordinated care models. Conclusions: This consensus statement reflects information synthesized from an interdisciplinary group of experts based on the best available evidence from the literature or personal experience. We hope this document raises awareness among clinicians and researchers to take steps to mitigate the risk of osteoarthritis after an anterior cruciate ligament injury.