Prevalence of symptomatic knee, hand, and hip osteoarthritis in Greece. The ESORDIG study.

Objective: To assess the prevalence of symptomatic knee, hand, and hip osteoarthritis (OA) in the general adult population of Greece.

Methods: This cross-sectional population based study was conducted on the total adult population of 7 communities (8547 subjects) and on 2100 out of 5686 randomly selected subjects in an additional 2 communities. Sixteen rheumatologists visited the target population at their homes; an interview based on a standardized questionnaire was conducted and clinical evaluation and laboratory investigations were done, when necessary.