“…In our study, we used a register-based approach to evade this challenge, assuming that surgical treatment serves as a proxy for disease progression or severity-a strategy which has previously been used rewardingly. 18 The advantage of using surgery as the indicator is that it is a clinically more relevant measure than radiographic changes, for which correlation with symptom intensity is inconsistent and modest, at best. [39][40][41] In contrast, surgery is preceded by an orthopedic assessment, where a surgeon, in cooperation with the patient, has found the objective and subjective symptoms severe enough to justify the associated risks, inconvenience, and expenses of the surgical procedure.…”