The National Joint Replacement Registry at 25
Episode 3 of the AOA's MSK Connect podcast covers the Australian Orthopaedic Association's 2024 AOANJRR Annual Report, which marks the registry's 25th anniversary.
The guests
The episode features Prof. Paul Smith, Prof. Chris Vertullo, Dr David Gill and Dr Peter Stavrou, with insights across knee, shoulder, and foot and ankle surgery.
What the registry does
The National Joint Replacement Registry records joint replacements performed in Australia and follows them over time, which allows the performance of individual implants and techniques to be tracked across the whole country rather than within single units. Twenty-five years of data means that implants can be assessed on their actual revision rates over long periods instead of on short-term results.
The discussion covers robot-assisted surgery and 3D printed prostheses, and the effect these are expected to have on revision rates as the data accumulates.
What a revision rate measures
A revision is a further operation in which part or all of a joint replacement is exchanged or removed. Revision is the measure a registry can follow reliably, because it is a recorded surgical event rather than a matter of interpretation, and it is used as a proxy for how an implant is performing in practice. It is not a complete picture of how a patient is getting on, since a joint can be uncomfortable without being revised and can be perfectly satisfactory for years, but it is consistent across hospitals and across decades. When an implant begins to show a higher revision rate than comparable designs, the registry can identify it earlier than individual surgeons would. Individual results vary.
Listen
The episode is available on Apple Podcasts. New episodes are released on the second Friday of each month, with episode four live on Friday 14 March.