TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ohrndorf, Sarah
A1  - Naumann, Lydia
A1  - Grundey, Jessica
A1  - Scheel, Tanja
A1  - Scheel, Alexander Konrad
A1  - Werner, Carola
A1  - Backhaus, Marina
T1  - Is musculoskeletal ultrasonography an operator-dependent method or a fast and reliably teachable diagnostic tool? interreader agreements of three ultrasonographers with different training levels
T2  - International journal of rheumatology
N2  - Objectives. To assess interreader agreements and a learning curve between three (senior, junior, and beginner) different experienced musculoskeletal ultrasonographers. Senior served as the imaging "gold standard".
Methods. Clinically dominant joints (finger, shoulder, knee, tibiotalar, and talonavicular) of 15 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients were examined by three different experienced ultrasonographers (senior 10 years, junior 10 months, and beginner one month). Each patient's ultrasonographic findings were reported unaware of the other investigators' results.  coefficients, percentage agreements, sensitivities, and specificities were calculated.
Results. 120 joints of 15 RA patients were evaluated. Comparing junior's and beginner's results each to the senior's findings, the overall  for all examined joints was 0.83 (93%) for junior and 0.43 (76%) for beginner. Regarding the different joints, junior's findings correlate very well with the senior's findings (finger joints: ; shoulder: ; knee: ; tibiotalar joint: ; talonavicular joint: ) while beginner's findings just showed fair to moderate agreements (finger joints: ; shoulder: ; knee: ; tibiotalar joint: ; talonavicular joint: ). In total, beginner's results clearly improved from  (agreement of 67%) at baseline to  (agreement of 89%) at the end of the evaluation period.
Conclusions. Ultrasonographic evaluation of a ten-month-experienced investigator in comparison to a senior ultrasonographer was of substantial agreement. Agreements between a beginner and a highly experienced ultrasonographer were only fair at the beginning, but during the study including ultrasonographical sessions of 15 RA patients, the beginner clearly improved in musculoskeletal ultrasonography.
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50642
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-506421
SN  - 1687-9279
SN  - 1687-9260
N1  - Copyright © 2010 Sarah Ohrndorf et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 2010
IS  - Art. 164518
SP  - 1
EP  - 7
PB  - Hindawi
CY  - New York, NY
ER  -