[Validation of an emergency care physician training program "two-point flash US"].
BACKGROUND
The development of a short training program for emergency care physicians for rapid ultrasound assessment of two points (the groin and popliteal areas) could be useful for later implementation of a safe home care strategy for patients with suspected deep vein thrombosis before the results of a complete duplex-Doppler exploration are available.


OBJECTIVE
Validation of the proposed training program by studying inter-operator agreement (trainee versus vascular physician) in a multicentric assessment of 60 emergency care physicians. Establish the learning curve.


METHODS
Theoretical training: two-page document with schematic drawings and consultation of image bank on the Web. Practical training: 25 patients in all, the last 15 as an independent operator, writing a standardized report. Interoperator agreement: (a) centralized data collection and independent analysis of the report written by the trainee and a vascular physician for the same patients (n(o) 11 to 25); (b) determination of the coefficient of variance, kappa, and construction of the learning curve (900 agreement points for 60 trainees).


METHODS
(a) Treated distal or proximal thrombosis recruited by the vascular physician (blinded to the result of the flash US); patient's oral consent.


RESULTS
Learning curve leveling off at about the 20th patient with a kappa>0.61 or even 0.80. ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION OF THE PROJECT: (a) Prospective, multicentric, blinded study: (i) confirming the feasibility of a two-point venous ultrasound performed by emergency care physicians; (ii) validation of the contents and duration of a short simplified training program; (b) Validation of a decision criterion for home care; If validated, this type of training program might be applied in other disciplines (intensive care, geriatrics).
Barrellier
M-T
MT
Laboratoire des explorations fonctionnelles, CHU de Côte-de-Nacre, 14033 Caen cedex, France. barrellier-mth@chu-caen.fr
Armand-Perroux
A
A
Bosson
J-L
JL
D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D018608:Ultrasonography, Doppler / Q000379:methods*