BMJ 1995;311:453 (12 August)

Letters

Open access echocardiography

EDITOR,--We have six years of experience of open access echocardiography for general practitioners, so we read the paper by C M Francis and colleagues1 and the accompanying editorial by J R Hampton and A R Barlow2 with interest.

We have performed a retrospective study of echocardiograms ordered by general practitioners at a health teaching centre of family medicine between January 1985 and April 1991. The centre has six general practitioners and covers a population of 22000. There are also six trainees in family medicine and a paediatrician. The echocardiography was done by an experienced cardiologist working at a large hospital, which covers a population of 350000.

There were no predetermined criteria for ordering echocadiograms. During the study period 127 echocardiograms were requested, but data were missing in 14, leaving 113 for analysis.

Eighty echocardiograms had been ordered because of persistent symptoms, 25 because of dyspnoea, 21 because of palpitations, 14 . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Open access echocardiography in management of heart failure in the community
C M Francis, L Caruana, P Kearney, M Love, G R Sutherland, I R Starkey, T R D Shaw, and J J V McMurray
BMJ 1995 310: 634-636. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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