[The first decade of the DGOU's cartilage register-insights for clinical practice].

Background: Registry data provide valuable epidemiological insights that help to further improve process and outcome quality in patient care. The German Cartilage Registry (KnorpelRegister DGOU) was established in 2013 as an instrument for quality assurance after surgical cartilage regenerative procedures on hip, knee and ankle joints.

Data Collection: Participation in the German Cartilage Registry is optional for hospitals and practices. Currently, more than 160 institutions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland participate in the data collection.

Data Collected And Initial Findings: The implementation of PROMs ("patient related outcome measurement"), as well as the recording of surgery-related influencing factors, enable a differentiated scientific analysis and represent a key quality feature of the registry. Initial analyses of the registry data have already provided clinically relevant findings for immediate patient care. For example, patients who underwent focal cartilage therapy prior to ACT show a clinically relevant, significantly worse outcome than patients who underwent primary ACT. First conclusions could also be drawn regarding the relevance of concomitant cartilage therapy. For example, in patients with focal cartilage damage of the medial knee joint compartment, registry data indicate that leg axis correction is indicated even in cases of mild deviation of the mechanical leg axis.

Conclusion: The data and findings obtained from the Cartilage Registry represent an important aspect of clinical care research and serve as a complement to well-designed, clinically prospective cohort studies, RCTs, and meta-analyses.