Musculoskeletal healthcare: Have we over‐egged the pudding?

We focus on 4 aspects of overdiagnosis that can lead to medical overuse in musculoskeletal health care: (i) Overtesting where patients receive unnecessary tests (ii) Overdetection where clinicians act upon clinically unimportant findings (iii) Overdefinition where the boundaries between disease and health are shifted to encourage more healthcare, and (iv) Overtreatment where culture, industry and health systems encourage treatment with no net benefit. We provide some examples that illustrate the nature and size of the problem, and highlight potential drivers of overuse of musculoskeletal health services.Dr Mary O'Keeffe is supported by funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 75049