Registry-Based Studies

Registries have been implemented in research for decades and have helped longitudinally to improve healthcare. As a result, numerous medical registries have been introduced with the aim of expanding our understanding of specific illnesses, injuries, and diseases in a systematic manner. These registries may be established by specific research groups and special interest groups or through collaboration by several registries in an effort to pool results from various sources. Registry studies can provide us with enough data to evaluate different outcomes at population level. Registries can be utilized in several ways, and in this chapter, we discuss the role of registry studies focusing on medical research, with special emphasis on orthopedic surgery and physical therapy. We present opportunities to and motivation for using registry data for medical research purposes, using examples from the Swedish National Patient Registry (SNPR) and the Swedish National Knee Ligament Registry (SNKLR).