The Effect on Physician Interpretation after Ultrasound Video Transmission

• 作者: Ann Marie Kuchinski Bradley White Eric Zevallos Joseph Coppiano Matt Lyon Patricia Hall Patrick Loeffler Taylor Mueller Zachary Farmer
• 来源期刊: 急诊医学(英文)
• 学科: 医学
• 关键词: ULTRASOUND TELEMEDICINE EMERGENCY Medicine Transmission SKYPE
• 年，卷（期）: 2017,（2）
• 页码范围: 25-36
• 页数: 12页
• 分类号: R73

摘要

Title: The Effect on Physician Interpretation After Ultrasound Video Transmis-sion. Objective: There is a limited amount of qualified sonographers, which is problematic to rural, and prehospital settings that require clinical ultrasound. One solution is the use of telemedicine to transmit ultrasound videos to a distant expert. Our objective was to determine the effect of video image transfer using Skype on physician image interpretation. Methods: Three emergency medicine physicians of varied ultrasound proficiency were given 72 pairs of transmitted and non-transmitted ultrasound video clips in random order. Raters were instructed to determine whether ultrasound clips were positive or negative for pathology. Same interpretations between video pairs were categorized as homodiagnostic while different interpretations were categorized as heterodiagnostic. Raters were also asked to rate the image resolution, image detail, and total image quality using a 10-point Likert scale. For the diagnostic results, rater agreement, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated. Results: The raters collectively demonstrated high agreement (92.1%), sensitivity (96.3%), specificity (92.8%), and accuracy (94.1%). Raters 1 (95.8%, κ = 0.912) and 3 (97.2%, κ = 0.942) had near perfect agreement, while rater 2 (83.3%, κ = 0.666) had substantial agreement. Only raters 1 and 3 detected a decrease in image resolution, image detail, and total image quality (p Conclusions: This study demonstrates that transmission via Skype has minimal effect on a physician’s interpretation of an ultrasound video. The implications of these results are that ultrasound video transmission can be used to improve access to specialists without compromising accuracy which will ultimately increase patients’ quality of care.