"Echocardiography in Nigeria: use, problems, reproducibility and potentials"

BACKGROUND Although echocardiography is a useful and cost-effective technique for the detection of morphological and functional cardiac abnormalities, it has a main limitation in its subjectivity. Therefore the aim of the present study was to assess the intra-observer reproducibility and validity of 2-dimensional guided M-mode echo measurements at a Nigerian metropolitan Hospital. METHODS Standard echocardiographic examination was performed on twenty randomly selected patients (11 men and 9 women) aged 59.8 +/- 12.6 years in two different sessions seven days apart. RESULTS A good degree of intraobserver agreement was observed between test 1 and test 2. The correlation coefficient between the first and second studies ranged between 0.60 and 0.96; measurement errors between 0.050 and 0.205. CONCLUSION We would conclude that 2-dimensional guided M-mode measurements at echocardiography performed at our centre are reproducible with low intra-observer variability.