Commentary on “Descriptive Study Comparing Routine Hospital Administrative Data with the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland's National Vascular Database” by P. Aylin et al.

The paper by Aydin et al. nicely illustrates the ongoing problems with disease registries. Many of us will recognize that information from administrative systems as well as clinical databases have serious limitations. It is not only a problem of Great Britain and Ireland; we are all faced with the same problem. Lack of uniform definitions, loss to follow-up, underreporting and the (un)conscious selection of information to be included are...