Local Validation of a National Orthopaedic Registry

Registries are limited by the quality of the data they collect. We aimed to measure the data entry error rate at a regional orthopaedic unit in a national arthroplasty registry and to assess a proposed intervention of restricting data entry to senior trainees.

A total of 200 primary and revision arthroplasty cases (119 hips, 81 knees) were randomly selected from a single year, 2020. The Irish National Orthopaedic Registry was examined for the grade of the trainee that populated the form and the accuracy of 24 parameters by comparison with data recorded elsewhere in the patient record.

The mean number of errors per form was 2.17 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.95-2.39), giving an overall error rate of 9% (95% CI: 8%-10.0%). Eighty-seven percent of forms examined contained inaccuracies, ranging from one to nine errors (4%-38%). Some parameters were more prone to errors, ranging from 1% to 28%. There was no evidence of total errors varying by trainee grade (analysis of variance (ANOVA) p-value: 0.34).

Error rates were in line with the literature. Results did not support restricting data entry to senior trainees.