Cohort profile: the St Vincent’s Melbourne Arthroplasty Outcomes (SMART) Registry, a pragmatic prospective database defining outcomes in total hip and knee replacement patients

PURPOSE: The St Vincent’s Melbourne Arthroplasty Outcomes (SMART) Registry is an institutional clinical registry housed at a tertiary referral hospital in Australia. The SMART Registry is a pragmatic prospective database, which was established to capture a broad range of longitudinal clinical and patient-reported outcome data to facilitate collaborative research that will improve policy and practice relevant to arthroplasty surgery for people with advanced arthritis of the hip or knee. The purpose of this cohort profile paper is to describe the rationale for the SMART Registry’s creation, its methods, baseline data and future plans for the Registry. A full compilation of the data is provided as a reference point for future collaborators. PARTICIPANTS: The SMART Registry cohort comprises over 13 000 consecutive arthroplasty procedures in more than 10 000 patients who underwent their procedure at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, since January 1998. Participant recruitment, data collection and follow-up is ongoing and currently includes up to 20 years follow-up data. FINDINGS TO DATE: SMART Registry data are used for clinical audit and feedback, as well as for a broad range of research including epidemiological studies, predictive statistical modelling and health economic evaluations. At the time of writing, there were 46 publications from SMART Registry data, with contributions from more than 67 coauthors. FUTURE PLANS: With the recent linking of the SMART Registry with Medicare Benefits Schedule and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data through the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, research into prescribing patterns and health system utilisation is currently underway. The SMART Registry is also being updated with the Clavien-Dindo classification of surgical complications.