Diagnostic accuracy of range of motion measurements in early symptomatic hip and/or knee osteoarthritis

The objective of this study was to examine the diagnostic accuracy of hip internal rotation, hip flexion, and knee flexion measurements for the presence of osteophytosis and joint space narrowing (JSN) in early symptomatic osteoarthritis (OA). The baseline data for 598 participants of the Cohort Hip & Cohort Knee study were used. Participants underwent a standardized physical and radiographic examination. The active range of motion (ROM) was assessed using a goniometer. The ROM cutoff with the highest discriminative ability for radiographic features of OA was defined by maximizing the sum of the sensitivity and specificity. Several diagnostic measures were calculated to establish the diagnostic accuracy of ROM measurements for the presence of radiographic features.