ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Registries are becoming increasingly more important in clinical research. The TraumaRegister DGU® of the German Society for Trauma Surgery plays an excellent role with respect to the care of severely injured patients. AIM: Within the framework of this investigation the quality of data provided by this registry was to be verified. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Certified hospitals participating in the TraumaNetzwerk DGU® of the German Society for Trauma Surgery are obliged to submit data of treated severely injured patients to the TraumaRegister DGU®. Participating hospitals have to undergo a re-certification process every 3 years. Within the framework of this re-audit, data from 5 out of 8 randomly chosen patient cases included in the registry are controlled and compared to the patient files of the certified hospital. In the present investigation discrepancies concerning data provided were documented and the pattern of deviation was analyzed. RESULTS: The results of 1075 re-certification processes carried out in 631 hospitals including the documentation of 5409 checked patient cases from 2012-2017 were analyzed. The highest number of discrepancies detected concerned the documented time until initial CT (15.8%) and the lowest concerned the discharge site (3.2%). The majority of data sheets with discrepancies showed deviations in only one out of seven checked parameters. Interestingly, large trauma centers with a high throughput of severely injured patients showed the most deviations. CONCLUSION: The present investigation underlines the importance of standardized checks concerning data provided for registries in order to be able to guarantee an improvement in entering data.
