Hospital patients need open access echocardiography

doi:10.1136/bmj.311.7000.326a

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John Zarifis,
D Gareth Beevers,
Gregory Y H Lip

Research fellow Professor of medicine Research fellow University Department of Medicine, City Hospital, Birmingham B18 7QH

EDITOR,--We agree with C M Francis and colleagues that echocardiography is useful in patients with heart failure and that an open access service may be used successfully by general practitioners.1 Heart failure is also common among patients admitted to hospital,2 but we have noted a reluctance to use echocardiography in such patients.

To investigate this further we recently …