Reproducibility of pulsed wave tissue Doppler echocardiography

Four hundred and eighty paired recordings obtained from 16 patients (55 +/- 10 yrs; 10 men, 6 women) were analyzed to determine the reproducibility of both acquiring and measuring myocardial velocities recorded by tissue Dopp ler echocardiography. To assess intraobserver variability, 1 observer recor ded and measured the data twice, from the same patients, and to assess inte robserver variability, patients were examined by 2 independent observers. F or the left ventricle, intraobserver reproducibility was higher when assess ing long-axis velocities (+/- 10% to 16%) than short-axis velocities C(+/- 14% to 24%). For the right ventricle, intraobserver reproducibility was hig h for the tricuspid annulus (+/- 9% to 15%), but unsatisfactory for the rig ht ventricular anterior wall (+/- 21% to 25%). The highest interobserver re producibilities were obtained for systolic and diastolic velocities of the lateral mitral annulus (+/- 9% to 17%) and systolic velocity of the tricusp id annulus (+/-13%). Interobserver reproducibility of the ratio of early-to -late peak diastolic velocities was very low for all investigated sites (+/ - 20% to 52%). With the use of current techniques and software, reproducibi lity of acquiring and measuring tissue Doppler echocardiography is suboptim al for both systolic and diastolic myocardial velocities.