Use of the Valve Visualization on Echocardiography Grade Tool Improves Sensitivity and Negative Predictive Value of Transthoracic Echocardiogram for Exclusion of Native Valvular Vegetation

Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) remains the preferred test to rule out infective endocarditis (IE) but is resource intensive and carries risk. Multiple studies report low sensitivity of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) for detection of IE; however, these studies did not account for TTE quality. We test the validity of a simple valve visualization grading tool to stratify TTEs by quality and determine whether a high-quality TTE may be used to exclude valvular vegetation and forgo the need for TEE.

Source: Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography - October 30, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Katherine Connolly, Geraldine Ong, Michael Kuhlmann, Edwin Ho, Kevin Levitt, Husam Abdel-Qadir, Jeremy Edwards, Chi-Ming Chow, Mohammed-Salah Annabi, Ezequiel Guzzetti, Erwan Salaun, Philippe Pibarot, Idan Roifman, Howard Leong-Poi, Kim A. Connelly Source Type: research