Diagnostic accuracy of pocket-size handheld echocardiographs used by cardiologists in the acute care setting.

Aims: Pocket-size echographs may be useful for bedside diagnosis in acute cardiac care, but their diagnostic accuracy in this setting has not been well tested. Our aim was to evaluate this tool in patients requiring an urgent echocardiogram.

Methods: Trained cardiologists performed echocardiograms with a pocket-size echograph (Vscan) in consecutive patients requiring urgent echocardiography.

Accuracy of cardiac auscultation in the era of Doppler-echocardiography: a comparison between cardiologists and internists.

To investigate the present accuracy of cardiac auscultation, we asked a group of senior cardiologists and internists to auscultate respectively 72 and 70 selected patients and to give a diagnosis of the type of lesions heard and their degree of severity, using transthoracic Doppler-echocardiography as the standard reference. The percentage of correctly identified auscultations by cardiologists and by internists, particularly for common valvular lesions, such as aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation, was respectively 76.1 vs 64.

[Evolution of cardiac risk factors management among patients aged 65 years and older with coronary artery disease].

The aim of this retrospective study was to compare the appropriateness of cardiac risk factors (CV-RF) management in a Swiss cardiac rehabilitation center. The comparison of the control of CV-RF among 342 patients with coronary artery disease (CHD) aged > or =65 years was improved. The CV-RF management has globally improved during the two periods of observation (1994-95 and 1999-2000).