In the early 1980's several hip prosthesis brands common in use in Norway, were reported with largely inferior clinical results. Unfortunately, these prostheses were used to a large number of patients both in Norway and in other countries before their inferior results were known. To avoid similar situations in the future, a nation-wide register was set up to provide a continuous surveillance of the quality of joint replacements. The main objective of the register is to maintain and possibly improve the quality of joint arthroplasty. The specific aims of the register are to describe the epidemiology of joint arthroplasty and to identify factors associated with an increased risk for revision.
Information is given on a regular basis to each hospital performing orthopaedic surgery in Norway.
Another important channel of information is through scientific papers made public in journals related to orthopaedic research. The quality of joint replacements is evaluated based on the survival time of the prostheses, where survival time is defined as the time period from insertion of the prosthesis to its revision. Information on revisions is linked to the data already collected on earlier operations using the unique identification number assigned to each inhabitant of Norway. Thus, ordinarily statistical methods related to analyses of failure times are applied. Research projects During the period when the register has been in function, results on several research projects have been reported.