Clinical Usefulness of the Pocket Echocardiographic Device: Potential Advantage and Reliability Compared to the Conventional Echocardiographic Equipment

We hypothesized that pocket echocardiography (PE) is a useful and has a potential advantage in clinical practice. Methods: Study population consisted of 200 patients who underwent both PE and conventional (CE) (male 107, age 56.6±16.6 years). Each patient was submitted to physical examination before echocardiographic assessment. The agreement, sensitivity, specificity between PE and CE were assessed based on the diagnostic results of CE. Results: About 77.5% clinical questions could be answered by PE, however, only 6% questions could be answer by physical examination. The sensitivities and specificities of PE to detect the enlargement of left ventricle, right ventricle, left atrium and right atrium detected by CE were 89%- 100% and 100% (AUC= 0.94- 1.00), respectively. The sensitivities and specificities of PE to detect significant valvular regurgitation by CE were 96% and 97% (AUC= 0.97), respectively. There was excellent agreement between PE and CE in evaluating severity of valvular regurgitation for the four valves (kappa= 0.905). Eight of 9 patients with congenital heart disease could be successfully diagnosed by PE and confirmed by CE. Eight patients with critical ills in emergency room had been correctly diagnosed by PE, which should be acute managements after diagnosis. Conclusions: With pocket size nature, good agreement between PE and CE. PE showed additive clinical value over the clinical physical examination. It may alter the current consultation mode in clinical practice in the future.