Cr. Nwosu et al., IS REAL-TIME ULTRASONIC BLADDER VOLUME ESTIMATION RELIABLE AND VALID - A SYSTEMATIC OVERVIEW, Scandinavian journal of urology and nephrology, 32(5), 1998, pp. 325-330
To assess the reliability and validity of real-time ultrasonic estimat
ion of bladder volume we conducted an overview of the published litera
ture identified using MEDLINE search (1966-96) and scanning of the bib
liographies of known primary and review articles. Short-listed papers
were classified into reliability (observer agreement) and validity (co
mparison of ultrasound estimation with actual bladder volume) studies.
Study selection and data extraction were performed independently in d
uplicate. There were 81 subjects enrolled in 3 reliability studies and
504 subjects in 16 validity studies. Where reported, the index of con
cordance for reliability ranged from 0.923 to 1.00, while for validity
it ranged from 0.914 to 0.983. However, there were several inadequaci
es in the design, conduct and analysis of these studies, leaving some
doubt about the trustworthiness of the high levels of reliability and
validity reported in the literature.