[Assessment of the clinical feasibility of OptiGo for hand-held echocardiography]

Hand-held ultrasound devices are becoming available for clinical examination, but the accuracy and precision of such devices are unclear. This study compared the accuracy of a hand-held echo device to a standard echo system.

Twenty-two patients were examined with the OptiGo (Phillips Medial Systems) hand-held ultrasound system with a 2.5 MHz transducer and SONOS 5500 (Phillips Medial Systems) standard ultrasound system with a 2 to 4 MHz wideband transducer. Patients with cardiac arrhythmia and tachycardia were excluded. Image quality, chamber size (left ventricle, left atrium), global and regional left ventricular function, valve morphology and severity of valve regurgitation were assessed.

There was good agreement between the two imaging devices for image quality (77.3%), left ventricular ejection fraction (90.5%), regional wall motion score (> 90%), valve morphology (> 90%), severity of valve regurgitation (> 81.0%) and there was good correlation and agreement for left ventricular and left atrial size.

Although the OptiGo has limitations, the hand-held examination appropriately estimates global and regional left ventricular function, valve morphology, valve regurgitation and chamber size.