The development of an online implant manufacturer application: a knowledge-sharing platform for the Swedish Hip Arthroplasty Register

SHAR (founded in 1979) is a national quality register covering all orthopedic units performing hip replacement surgery in Sweden. The completeness of registrations during the last 10 years varies between 97–98% for total hip replacements, 95–97% for hemi-arthroplasties, and 91–95% for revision procedures when linking data to the Swedish national patient register (Kärrholm et al. 2018). The register currently covers more than 360,000 hip procedures, 1,100,000 registered items and 6,100 unique components. Administrative staff at the units report surgical variables for primary procedures and reoperations. Medical records copies covering admission, surgical procedure, and discharge for all patients undergoing reoperations are sent to the register for further extraction of data. 57 variables are collected regarding the primary surgery and 99 variables for reoperations. The register also retains a separate component database with variables describing attributes of the implant. The component database contains 141 variables. Additionally, the register comprises 54 variables collected through the patient-reported outcome measures program preoperatively, and 1, 6, and 10 years after surgery. Patient-reported outcome measures are all maintained in the principal database. Lastly, the register contains a separate surgical environment database with hospital-level aggregate information.

For the development of the manufacturer application, we included variables related to diagnosis, component features, reason for surgery, and surgery outcome in terms of revisions. Patient-reported outcome measures and surgical environment variables were not included.