An orthopedic complication-registration system

Abstract

Quality control is gaining ever-increasing interest in the evaluation of a surgical practice (Adar 1982, Stock et al. 1982, Castleden et al. 1992). Orthopedic surgeons have long been used to evaluating the results of various surgical techniques. A large proportion of clinical scientific research has been performed in retrospect, with the primary aim of reporting the percentages of patients with good, moderate or poor results. Peroperative and postoperative complications are generally mentioned, but it is important to bear in mind that in retrospective studies not all complications will have been recorded in the medical files and it will depend greatly on the opinion of the authors whether or not a particular condition is considered to be a complication.