Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Jun 26, 2020; 12(6): 262-268
Published online Jun 26, 2020. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v12.i6.262
Diagnostic and treatment utility of echocardiography in the management of the cardiac patient
Ariella Khalili, Jennifer Drummond, Neiman Ramjattan, Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus
Ariella Khalili, North Shore Hebrew Academy, Great Neck, NY 11020, United States
Jennifer Drummond, Department of Internal Medicine, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA 10211, United States
Neiman Ramjattan, Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus, Department of Cardiology, Nassau University Medical Center, East Meadow, NY 11554, United States
Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus, Department of Cardiology, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, NY 11549, United States
Author contributions: Khalili A, Drummond J, Ramjattan N, Zeltser R and Makaryus AN contributed significantly to this work; Zeltser R and Makaryus AN designed research; Drummond J, Ramjattan N performed research; Zeltser R and Makaryus AN designed the questionnaire; Drummond J, Ramjattan N, Zeltser R and Makaryus AN analyzed data; Khalili A, Zeltser R and Makaryus AN wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Nassau University Medical Center IRB (#15-001).
Informed consent statement: This retrospective study with anonymized data does not require informed consent due to nonidentifiable data as approved by our institutional review board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The guidelines of the STROBE Statement have been adopted.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Amgad N Makaryus, MD, Associate Professor, Chairman, Department of Cardiology, Nassau University Medical Center, 2201 Hempstead Turnpike, East Meadow, NY 11554, United States. amakaryu@numc.edu
Received: January 30, 2020
Peer-review started: January 30, 2020
First decision: April 3, 2020
Revised: May 12, 2020
Accepted: May 14, 2020
Article in press: May 14, 2020
Published online: June 26, 2020
Processing time: 148 Days and 5.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The echocardiogram is a useful tool used by cardiologists to manage patients. However, its practicality and availability may result in the overuse of echocardiography in situations where it is not warranted. Such overuse may result in exhaustion of resources and reduced efficiency. Our survey of physicians who ordered an echocardiogram sheds light on the true and perceived usefulness of the echocardiogram in an inpatient setting. The results illustrate physicians’ perception of echocardiography as somewhat or entirely essential for patient management, despite a proportion of reported mild or no effect on patient management.