A decision aid for referring patients with systolic murmurs for echocardiography.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the practice pattern of a group of primary care providers in ordering echocardiography for healthy patients and to derive a decision aid to identify patients with systolic murmurs who have significant cardiac lesions.


METHODS
Retrospective case review of clinical variables, including the demographic, historical, and physical examination features obtained from chart review of the physician evaluation prior to referral for echocardiography and the echocardiographic results, with both univariate and multivariate regression analyses used to identify variables predictive of positive echocardiographic outcomes and to derive a regression model.


METHODS
General internal medicine clinic in an urban major teaching hospital.


METHODS
169 patients between the ages of 18 and 55 years selected retrospectively from medical records.


RESULTS
Symptoms and auscultatory findings were not predictive of positive echocardiographic outcomes among the patients referred for the test. For the patients who had systolic murmurs, a logistic regression model had three significant predictors of positive echocardiographic results: additional year of age (odds ratio: 1.08, 95% CI: 1.02-1.13; p = 0.007); male gender (odds ratio: 5.87, 95% CI: 1.99-17.3; p = 0.002); and murmur grade > or = 3 (odds ratio: 4.99, 95% CI: 1.27-19.6; p = 0.02). The receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve area for this model was 0.741. If women aged 35 years and less with murmur grades < or = 2 had not been referred, 47% of the echocardiographies could have been avoided while retaining a sensitivity of 90%.


CONCLUSIONS
The study suggested that healthy patients with systolic murmurs are least likely to have positive echocardiographic results when they are young and female and have murmur grades < or = 2. More careful screening of this group might make unnecessary almost half of the echocardiographies yielding negative results ordered for healthy patients with systolic murmurs.
Fink
J C
JC
Division of Clinical Care Research, New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02111.
Schmid
C H
CH
Selker
H P
HP
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004452:Echocardiography; D005260:Female; D006337:Heart Murmurs / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D012372:ROC Curve; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013599:Systole