The First Report of the International Cartilage Regeneration and Joint Preservation Society's Global Registry.

Objective: The International Cartilage Regeneration and Joint Preservation Society's (ICRS's) global registry, aims to be the best source of information for patients and an unbiased resource of evidence-based medicine for scientists and clinicians working to help those unfortunate enough to suffer the pain and disability associated with articular cartilage lesions. This article constitutes the scientific summary of the reports' main findings.

Design: The article outlines the historical precedents in the development of orthopedic registries from the earliest tumor registries, then local arthroplasty databases that led ultimately to international collaborations between national arthroplasty and soft tissue registries.