About the AAOS:
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) is an organization that supports and provides educational resources to orthopaedic surgeons and other health care workers. A large part of their purpose it to improve patient experience and quality of orthopaedic care. The Registry is a database that was started 2017 as part of this effort. According to the AAOS, the goal of the registries is to “increase safety, improve patient outcomes, and promote best clinical practices.” Through collecting and analyzing data, the AAOS registries can provide valuable feedback and insights to doctors, hospitals, and other participating organizations. There are five branches of the Registry Program that Massachusetts General Brigham is supplying data to:
- American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR)
- Musculoskeletal Tumor Registry (MsTR)
- Shoulder & Elbow Registry (SER)
- American Spine Registry (ASR)
- Fracture and Trauma Registry (FTR)
Hip and Knee Arthroplasty
The American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) was founded in 2009 and has since grown to be the world’s largest registry of hip and knee replacement data. It reintegrated into the AAOS in 2017 and become the model registry for the AAOS Registry Program. By collecting and reported data regarding joint replacement surgeries across the country, AJRR provides guidance to physicians and hospitals. The goals of the registry are to help improve benchmark performance, limit complications and need for revisions, monitor device function, and ultimately improve patient care and decision making.
Orthopaedic Oncology
The Musculoskeletal Tumor Registry (MsTR) was created in 2019 through collaboration between the AAOS and the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS). The registry originated as a pilot program in 2018, but once it was apparent that it was possible to collect a higher volume of data regarding orthopaedic oncology bone tumor procedures in an organized way, the pilot was expanded to full registry. The MsTR is the third registry to join the AAOS family of registries.
Shoulder and Elbow
The Shoulder and Elbow Registry (SER) was launched in 2018 as the next anatomical area to include in the Registry Program. SER collects shoulder arthroplasty, elbow arthroplasty, and rotator cuff repair procedures in procedural, post-operative, and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) data from across the country to monitor survival and revision rates. Through this the AAOS is able to provide benchmark data for the comparison of patient outcomes and insight into decreasing the need for surgical revisions in a cost efficient way.
Spine
The American Spine Registry (ASR) is a collaborative registry between the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). As spine surgery is performed by neurosurgeons and orthopaedic surgeons, this shared platform enables high quality and reliable data for the benefit of doctors, patients, hospitals, and industry. The ultimate goals of ASR include establishing benchmarks for clinical performance, give feedback to the providers of its data to improve practice and health outcomes, and identify and fill gaps in our education and research in this field.
Fracture and Trauma
The Fracture & Trauma Registry (FTR) is the fifth registry added to the AAOS Registry Program with the support of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA). FTR is in the process of gathering data on the five most common fractures in the US: Ankle fracture, Distal femur fracture, Distal radius fracture, Hip fracture (in collaboration with the AJRR), and Proximal humerus fracture (in collaboration with the SER). The FTR is the first AAOS Registry to contain these collaborative modules crossing over several registry databases, which provide even more benefits through the AAOS RegistryInsights® platform, with full participant enrollment in 2021.