Medical registries: continued attempts for robust quality data.

Medical registries are useful to summarize retrospective or prospective data in a fashion that, on interpretation, could result in changes in the standard of care or highlight issues that must be further investigated in the management of certain diseases. Registries involve collection of data and registries are only as good as the fidelity of the data that are collected. There are a number of sources of error in registry formation. This brief review summarizes the errors that could influence the quality of the data in a registry and points out methods that could decrease those errors.