ICON PART-T 2019: International Scientific Tendinopathy Symposium Consensus: recommended standards for reporting participant characteristics in tendinopathy research (PART-T)

Key points

1. 01Built through a three-stage process: a scoping review of 263 tendinopathy papers, an online expert survey, and a face-to-face consensus meeting in Groningen, 2018.
2. 02Consensus was reached on 18 of 20 items, grouped into demographics, clinical tendinopathy descriptors, general health and comorbidities, and recruitment.
3. 03All recommended items apply to both cases and controls, covering tendons of the elbow, Achilles, patellar, hamstring and lateral hip.
4. 04Two items, primary aggravating activity and pain maps, did not reach consensus and were left for future work.
5. 05Free infographics and a data collection sheet were produced to help researchers adopt the recommendations.

How it was conducted

Design

International expert consensus (scoping review, online survey, in-person meeting)

Evidence base

Scoping review of 263 tendinopathy studies (85 elbow, 91 Achilles, 56 patellar, 23 lateral hip, 8 hamstring)

Participants

30 healthcare professionals invited, 28 completed the survey (36% female, mean age 53), 15 attended the meeting

Consensus threshold

70% or higher agreement or disagreement to reach consensus

Outcome

Recommended checklist of participant characteristics to report

What they found

• 13 of 20 statements reached the >70% consensus threshold during the online survey, and 7 that did not were discussed at the in-person meeting.
• Consensus was ultimately achieved for 18 of 20 items.
• Primary aggravating activity and pain maps did not reach consensus, at 13% and 27% agreement respectively.
• Recommended items for both cases and controls include sex, age, standing height, body mass, symptom duration and severity, history of tendon pain, level of disability, loading tests, location of symptoms, imaging use, recruitment, comorbidities, medication use and physical activity level.

Limitations

• The number of experts included in the consensus was limited.
• Expert characteristics may have been unequal, for example only 36% were women, and global geographical diversity may not have been fully represented.
• This is a reporting-standards recommendation, so it does not test whether following it improves patient outcomes.
• Items such as psychological factors, patient expectation and pain self-efficacy were not included and were flagged for future consensus work.

Why it matters

For patients

Encourages studies to clearly describe who was involved, making it easier to know whether a study's findings apply to a person like you.

For clinicians

Standardised participant reporting helps you judge how well a study's population matches your patient before applying its results.

For readers

A practical checklist that pushes tendon research toward clearer, more comparable, and more usable reporting.