Portable echocardiography: an innovative tool in screening for XXXX in the community.

@entity712 @entity4346 @entity299 @entity340 @entity1002
AIMS: @entity712 is placing an increasing burden on society. This has led to calls for echocardiographic-based programmes to screen for @entity1002 and other @entity299 . Echocardiography using new fully portable echocardiography devices would allow community-based cost-effective screening programmes once validated. This study was undertaken to evaluate this further in both high and low-risk subjects. METHODS AND RESULTS: 562 consecutive subjects attending a community-based @entity712 screening programme, some at high-risk and some at low-risk of @entity299 , underwent echocardiography by both portable and traditional echocardiography machines. An 'eyeball' estimate of left ventricular ejection fraction was made on the portable device and compared to a quantitative measure of ejection fraction on the traditional machine. Qualitative measures of @entity340 and quantitative measures of @entity4346 were also compared. An estimate of ejection fraction was possible in 97% of cases using portable echocardiography. It gave a sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive value in diagnosing @entity1002 of 96%, 98% and 99.6%, respectively. Inter-observer variability gave a mean difference in ejection fraction of 2%, and 95% limits of agreement of -8% to +12%. All cases of moderate or severe @entity340 and 29 of 31 cases of significant @entity4346 were correctly identified as abnormal on the portable device. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, echocardiography performed by experienced sonographers using these new fully portable devices is an accurate and reproducible technique for detecting @entity1002 , @entity4346 and @entity340 in both high-risk and low-risk members of the community. Its very high negative predictive values would allow their use in future community-based screening programmes.
