Electronic Supplementum no 362: ISAR meeting Gothenburg 2015, Sweden

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Nordic Orthopedic Federation. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) DOI 10.1080/17453674.2016.1193664 The International Society of Arthroplasty Registers (ISAR) was formed in 2004 at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting. 40 national, regional, or institutional registries are currently members of ISAR (13 full and 27 associate). The goal of ISAR is to ‘‘utilize the strength of cooperation and sharing of information and further enhance the capacity of individual registries to meet their own aims and objectives. The society is involved in the development of frameworks to encourage collaborative activities and provides a support network for established and developing registries’’ (ISAR Bylaw, www.isarhome.org). Arthroplasty registries play an important role in post-market surveillance of implants, patient safety, continuous quality improvement, and clinical research. The value of arthroplasty registries is not simply to monitor implant performance but to drive improvements and quality of care. This is achieved by giving feedback to surgeons, providers, and regulatory bodies to facilitate change in practice. It is important to appreciate that registries in themselves cannot prevent unexpected events, but what they can do is pick up the signals of failure at a much earlier stage than would otherwise have occurred (Malchau and Porter 2015, Malchau et al. 2015). ISAR started to develop a new strategy in October 2013, and 5 working groups were formed to add value to the organization. These are: Bylaws and Future Funding Committee, Research and Publication Guidelines, Harmonization of Implants and Metrics, Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs), and Service Improvement. These working groups have had—and still do have—regular meetings. ISAR has several future goals. Most important of all is probably the continued work on the international harmonization of implants, outcome measures, statistical methods, and validation processes. If the organization succeeds with this important work, we can create opportunities for pooling of high-quality and structured data (Big Data), with a large potential for early detection of signals of bad implants and clinical research in this fi eld. As ISAR grew and expanded, it held its fi rst international congress in Norway in 2012. Papers in this Acta Orthopaedica Supplement no. 362 were presented at the Fourth Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, on May 23–25, 2015. The Supplement includes 6 peer-reviewed papers from the meeting, 2 of which are the result of the International Working Group regarding PROM issues in arthroplasty registries. The 4 other articles have been selected from approximately 60 high-quality podium presentations at the meeting.