A study done by some of our favorite residents and attendings says there is a debate!
They surveyed physician sonographers at 6 conferences in 3 academic medical centers in NY. Each person was given 20 seconds per slide to determine whether each of the 15 video clips of patients in cardiac arrest were standstill or not.
n= 127 participants and there was only moderate inter-rater agreement among all participants (α=0.47) when determining cardiac standstill on ultrasound.
Quick note about cohen’s kappa coefficient (α): it measures inter-rate agreement:
<0: no agreement
0-0.20: slight agreement
0.21-0.40: fair agreement
0.41-0.60: moderate agreement
0.61-0.80: substantial agreement
0.81-1: almost perfect agreement
Article in Press: Hu K, Gupta N, Teran F, Saul T, Nelson B, Andrus P. Variability in Interpretation of Cardiac Standstill Among Physician Sonographers.
http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(17)31376-8/pdf
