Physicians’ Ability to Visually Estimate Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction, Right Ventricular Enlargement, and Paradoxical Septal Motion After a 2-Day Focused Cardiac Ultrasound Training Course

Focused cardiac ultrasound (FCU) can provide useful information for the management of shock and acute respiratory distress syndrome. This study aimed to determine whether a 2-day focused cardiac ultrasound training course could enable critical care physicians to interpret ultrasound images in terms of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), ratio of right ventricular end-diastolic area to left ventricular end-diastolic area (R/LVEDA), and septal kinetics. A prospective analysis of an image test score. Ultrasound training programs in 7 regions across China. Two hundred forty-seven critical care physicians. All participants received a 2-day FCU training, including 4 sessions of basic heart function appraisal, 3 sessions of hands-on practice, and 1 session of image interpretation. The post-training total scores were considerably higher than those of pretraining (75.6% v 58.9%, respectively, p < 0.001). After the course, the trainees obtained considerably higher scores on images with LVEF 1 than on images with R/LVEDA 0.6 to 1 and R/LVEDA