Objective(s): Our hypothesis was that our devised transesophageal echocardiography probe cover with the capacity for pinpoint suction would improve image quality.
Design: Prospective cohort study.
Setting: Single tertiary medical center.
Participants: Patients undergoing surgery requiring intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography.
Interventions: Suctioning with inserted orogastric tube.
Measurements and main results: Changes in image quality with suctioning were assessed by 2 methods. In method #1, investigators categorized the quality of all acquired images on a numeric scale based on each investigator's impression (1: very poor, 2: poor, 3: acceptable, 4: good, and 5: very good). In method #2, the reproducibility of the left ventricular fraction area change (LV FAC) was assessed, assuming that improved transgastric midpapillary short-axis view image quality would yield better LV FAC reproducibility. With method #1, for midesophageal views, 26.5%, 70.5%, and 3.0% of images showed improved, the same, and worsened image quality, respectively. For transgastric views, 55.3%, 43.3%, and 1.4% showed improved, the same, and worsened image quality, respectively. For deep transgastric views, 60.0%, 38.0%, and 2.0% showed improved, the same, and worsened image quality, respectively. With method #2, the presuction group had an ICC of 0.942 (95% CI: 0.91, 0.965). The postsuction group had an ICC of 0.988 (95% CI: 0.981, 0.993).
Conclusions: Our investigation validates the potential image quality improvement withour devised TEE probe cover. However, its clinical validity needs to be confirmed by further studies.
Keywords: Transesophageal echocardiography; probe cover image quality.
© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.