Preliminary Interpretations of Transthoracic Echocardiograms by Cardiology Fellows

The results indicate that although minor discrepancies between fellows' and attending cardiologists' interpretations were common (14.4%), major discrepancies were uncommon (2.4%) and similar to major discrepancy rates from the radiology literature. In general, discrepant interpretations were more likely to result from changes in severity, but misses accounted for almost all of the major discrepancies. Further research is needed to compare the clinical impact of different models of on-call echocardiographic services.