Intrarater and interrater reliability of pulse examination in traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine.

Background: In Ayurveda, pulse examination () is an important tool to assess the status of three : , , and . Long historical use has been seen as a documentation of its efficacy; however, there is a lack of a quantitative measure of the reliability of the pulse examination method. The objective of this study was to test the intrarater and interrater reliability of pulse examination in Ayurveda.

Methods: Fifteen registered Ayurvedic doctors with 3-15 years of experience examined the pulse of 20 healthy volunteers twice, for a total of 600 examinations. The examinations were performed blind and in a random order. Only the current status of specific methods of pulse examination were considered. Cohen's weighted κ statistic was used as a measure of intrarater and interrater reliability, and a hypothesis of homogeneous diagnosis (random rating) was tested. Following this, we tested whether proportions of ratings were equal between doctors.

Results: According to the Landis and Koch scale, the level of reliability ranged from poor to moderate. It was observed that the doctors more frequently diagnosed a combination of two than a single The κ values were generally larger for experienced doctors (  0.04).

Conclusion: Experience and proper training have important roles in pulse examination.