REPEATABILITY OF COLOR M-MODE DOPPLER MEASUREMENTS OF LEFT-VENTRICULAR FILLING

We investigated the repeatability of two recently reported colour M-mo de Doppler measures of left ventricular diastolic function. 'Delay of peak velocity' is the time interval from peak velocity of early fillin g at the mitral tip level to peak velocity in the apical region. The ' velocity of flow propagation' is the speed of the mitral to apical spr ead of the early diastolic filling. Two examiners independently and bl indly made measurements by both methods on 32 digital recordings twice , using custom software. Inter- and intra-observer repeatability were given in terms of limits of agreement, where 1 denotes perfect agreeme nt. Limits of intra-observer agreement were 0.72-1.43 for measurements of 'delay of peak velocity', and 0.39-2.28 for 'velocity of flow prop agation'. Limits of inter-observer agreement were 0.68-1.42 and 0.19-2 .04 respectively. The correlation between the methods was weak (r = 0. 45), suggesting that they may detect different properties of early dia stole. We suggest that the reliability of the methods may be improved by replicate measurements performed blindly. There are reasons to expr ess the velocity of flow propagation on a logarithmic scale.