LAUSR

We have read with great interest the editorial ‘Use of surgical databases in urogynaecology’ by Abdelrahman, Moore and Trochez [1], and we agree wholeheartedly that good quality surgical registries are needed and that compulsory registries ensure better data quality. However, we were somewhat surprised to see that one of the oldest registries, The Norwegian Female incontinence registry (https://www.kvalitetsregistre.no/registers/norskkvinnelig-inkontinensregister), was not mentioned in the editorial. The Norwegian Female incontinence registry is a nationwide, compulsory quality registry for incontinence surgery performed in Norway. It was founded in 1998 and thus celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. The coverage rate is currently 98.5% and the registry was recently awarded stage IV status, the highest possible quality rating in Norway. More than 2500 new procedures are recorded each year and the registry now contains data on nearly 35,000 procedures. Subjective and objective data from the preand postoperative (6 months and 3 years) evaluations as well as the procedure and any peror postoperative complications are recorded consecutively in a local database within each hospital. Written consent is obtained from the patients. Anonymized data are transferred to the national registry. Data quality is validated at several levels including comparison with each hospital’s electronic patient records. Each department can use its local registry for quality assurance purposes. The registry issues annual reports of national and department level results to all participating departments and also reports detailed results to each individual department at surgeon level. The main results with the exception of the data on individual surgeons are made publicly available online (https://www.kvalitetsregistre.no/registers/norsk-kvinneliginkontinensregister). So far, 13 articles (plus 2 recently submitted to the IUJ) based on data from the registry have been published in international peer-reviewed journals.