Vascular Health and Risk Management (Apr 2023)
Cardiac Anesthesia Intraoperative Interpretation Accuracy of Transesophageal Echocardiograms: A Review of the Current Literature and Meta-Analysis
Abstract
Eric Kawana,1 Benjamin Vachirakorntong,2 Vladislav Pavlovich Zhitny,3,4 Michael C Wajda,3 Luzviminda Alexander,1,5 Jake Patrick Young,6 Kyaw Min Tun,4 Omar Al-Taweel,1,5 Chowdhury Ahsan,1,5 Gyorgy Varsanyi,7 Aditi Singh1,4 1Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA; 2Touro University Nevada College of Osteopathic Medicine, Henderson, NV, USA; 3Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care and Pain Medicine, New York University, New York City, NY, USA; 4Department of Internal Medicine, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, Las Vegas, NV, USA; 5Department of Cardiology, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA; 6Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 7Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, OptumCare, Las Vegas, NV, USACorrespondence: Vladislav Pavlovich Zhitny, New York University, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care and Pain Medicine, 5578 Victoria Regina Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89139, USA, Email [email protected]: In the United States, echocardiography is an essential component of the care of many cardiac patients. Recently, increased attention has been given to the accuracy of interpretation of cardiac-based procedures in different specialties, amongst them the field of cardiac anesthesiology and primary echocardiographers for transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE). The purpose of this study was to assess the TEE skills of cardiac anesthesiologists in comparison to primary echocardiographers, either radiologists or cardiologists. In this systematic review, we evaluated available current literature to identify if cardiac anesthesiologists interpret TEE procedures at an identical level to that of primary echocardiographers.Methods: A PRISMA systematic review was utilized from PubMed from the years 1952– 2022. A broad keyword search of “Cardiology Anesthesiology Echocardiogram” and “Echocardiography Anesthesiology” to identify the literature was used. From reviewing 1798 articles, there were a total of 9 studies included in our systematic review, 3 of which yielded quantitative data and 6 of which yielded qualitative data. The mean accuracy from each of these three qualitative studies was calculated and used to represent the overall accuracy of cardiac anesthesiologists.Results: Through identified studies, a total of 8197 TEEs were interpreted by cardiac anesthesiologists with a concordance rate of 84% to the interpretations of primary echocardiographers. Cardiac anesthesiologists had a concordance rate of 83% when compared to radiologists. On the other hand, cardiac anesthesiologists and cardiologists had a concordance rate of 87% in one study and 79% in another study.Conclusion: Based on these studies, cardiac anesthesiologists are shown to interpret TEEs similarly to that of primary echocardiographers. At this time, there is no gold standard to evaluate the accuracy of TEE readings. One way to address this is to individually assess the TEE interpretation of anesthesiologists and primary echocardiographers with a double-blind study.Keywords: echocardiography, transesophageal echocardiogram, cardiac anesthesia
