Inter-rater Reliability of Transcutaneous Doppler Ultrasound Measurements of Cardiac Output and Stroke Volume in the Pediatric Emergency Department

Abstract

Methods: An 8-month prospective observational study was conducted on a convenience sample of patients <18 years old (range 2 weeks to 17 years), presenting to the pediatric ED. Six raters were trained to use the TDUS (USCOM Ltd, Australia). Two raters, blinded to each other’s results, obtained independent measurements from the same patient within 15 minutes of each other. Inter-rater agreement was measured with the Pearson product correlation coefficient. Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated the extent of deviation from a line of agreement between raters.