The following is a summary of “Structured Cardiac Assessment Outperforms Visual Estimation in Novice Ultrasound Users: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” published in the December 2023  issue of Emergency Medicine by Berdnikov, et al.

In the emergency medicine curriculum, students were instructed on two methods supported by evidence to measure the systolic function of the left ventricle (LV). LV fractional shortening, E-point septal separation, and LV diameter are all measures that are evaluated qualitatively in the first method, which is referred to as a “structured approach.” A qualitative estimation of the left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF) is provided by the “eyeball method,” the other approach. For a study, researchers sought to determine whether the technique, the structured approach or the eyeball method, is more effective when instructing novices on estimating LVEF.

Participation in their randomized controlled study was solicited from medical students via the use of several methods. Participants completed one of two instructional modules, lasting fifteen minutes each after they were randomly assigned to either the structured approach group or the eyeball technique group. After that, participants analyzed twelve echocardiography films to assess the function of the left ventricle. The main result was the proportion of right interpretations evaluated by a cardiologist. In all, 74individuals were asked to participate in the research, and thirty-two of them successfully completed it (15 in the structured approach group and 17 in the eyeball technique group). All 30 of the 32 participants, or 93.75%, were medical students in their first and second years who had no previous experience with ultrasonography. 

The average time required to finish the training was comparable between the two groups (16.8 minutes at 17.8 minutes; P = 0.66). The key result, the percentage of right interpretations, was considerably greater in the group that used the structured technique than the group that utilized the eyeball method (88.9% vs 73.0%; P < 0.01). It was shown that training novice ultrasonography users in a structured qualitative LV evaluation approach was more successful than the eyeball method. After receiving just a short training intervention, the learners acquired a high level of accuracy. These findings may help determine the optimal strategies for creating ultrasound curricula for undergraduate students.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0736467923003141