The paper gives a practical example how medical registries can be used to supplement the evidence provided from randomized controlled trials. The real-life as well as the long-term perspectives are absolutely essential when it comes to judging therapies.
The clinical results in the large international spine registry are similar between the cervical total disc arthroplasty (TDA) and the anterior interbody fusion (AIF) in patients who are typically excluded from RCTs, which has not been reported so far. In well selected patients, TDA appears to be slightly more beneficial to AIF, which was also shown in a recent Cochrane review.
