Current challenges of registries
Nowadays a shoulder registry exists in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Portugal, France and the Kaiser Permanente in California.
Existing registries report on surgeon-derived measures, as key-outcome is revision, but there is an increasing demand of all stakeholders for more patient focused outcome measurements. Ideally registries should relate to patient derived outcome measurements as PROMs to enable us to analyze clinical outcome. In several countries the PROMs are already linked to the registry.
Comparative analysis of national registries is difficult as there is a difference in the parameters and outcome measurements recorded. Merging data from different national registries into a common database would enable us to compare incidence, indication, procedure, but also results, and the higher number of cases in such a database would improve the statistical strength of studies. However, this can only be obtained if we agree to use a similar set of variables and outcome measurements.
