Education and debate North of England evidence based guideline development project: summary guideline for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs versus basic analgesia in treating the pain of degenerative arthritis

Other members of the guideline development and project groups are listed in the Appendix This guideline addresses the appropriate use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in the primary care treatment of patients with joint pain believed to be caused by degenerative arthritis. It does not consider therapies other than drug treatment. General practitioners must use their professional knowledge and judgement when applying guideline recommendations to the management of individual patients. They should note the information, contraindications, interactions, and side effects contained in the British National Formulary.1 This is a summary of the full version of the guideline.2 In this article, the statements accompanied by categories of evidence (cited as Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, III, and IV) and recommendations classified according to their strength (A, B, C, or D) are as described previously and are summarised in the box.3 ### Summary points The methods used to develop the guideline have been described previously.3Briefly, we searched the electronic databases Medline and Embase, using a combination of subject heading and free text terms aimed at locating systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomised trials, quality of life studies, and economic studies. The search was backed up by the expert knowledge and experience of group members. ### Strength of recommendation