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Dr. McLaughlin:
Hello, and welcome to this segment. I'm going to talk today about some emerging tools for echocardiography, and specifically, the EchoRight smartphone app that I think is a wonderful learning tool. I'm Vallerie McLaughlin from the University of Michigan. And thank you for joining me.
So the EchoRight app, it's a smartphone app that was really created to raise awareness of the importance of systemically assessing the right heart with echocardiography. You know, a lot of times we pay most attention to the left side of the heart and a systematic assessment of the right heart is really important. It helps provide guidance on the right heart examination, and how to interpret some of these findings. And it supports the identification of 8 echocardiographic signs to assess the probability of pulmonary hypertension.
So here's the format of the EchoRight Pro app. It gives you a very short case summary, it tells you a little bit about the patient. And then it shows you echo loops of real cases. It asks you a question and then shows you the results and gives you feedback. So it really focuses on the echocardiographic parameters that are important to detect pulmonary hypertension, using real-world cases and various levels of difficulty.
The target audience is really cardiologists and echocardiographers, clinical physiologists, other healthcare scientists, but I think other people may benefit from this. There are providers who are really highly engaged in pulmonary hypertension, such as pulmonologists and rheumatologists, who may not get as much practice or experience with echocardiography. So I think it's really beneficial to them, as well as hospital-based pulmonary hypertension experts who wants to improve their care.
Benefits include learning and assessing the atypical echocardiographic signs of pulmonary hypertension. There's much more to the echo than just the TR velocity. And it's based on real-world cases and can be used as a self-learning tool. You can integrate this into other educational programs. And of course, the app is an evolving tool and new content can be added.
So it's a really wonderful platform that can start out with more modest information. So the level 1 is 31 cases that are really based on each of the 8 echocardiographic signs, and really serve as the foundation to prepare the learner to learn more complex information. The 2nd level is another 28 cases, different cases that combine echo signs to determine the probability of pulmonary hypertension. And then level 3 are another 35 cases that cover other important features, including those signs of a poor prognosis, and other hints for differential diagnosis and pitfalls. And of course, you can save some of the cases and set your cases library to enable you to select and store certain cases.
So let's go through an example case. It tells you a little bit about this patient, their symptoms, their medical history, so you have a suspicion for pulmonary arterial hypertension in this patient with liver disease. It then gives you an image and asks you a question. And this goal is to look at TR velocity. And so, then it shows you the correct answer, and the teaching points around the TR velocity and even some more information about probability of pulmonary hypertension, as this is one of the important things that we measure on echo. So it really takes you through all of that.
So to summarize, the EchoRight app, I think, is a great learning tool, short cases, real cases, real pictures, it quizzes you, it tells you if you're right, it gives you the feedback so that you can learn. And there are many cases that you can practice on.
So I hope you'll download this and start using it so that you can enhance your echo skills, and I hope you find it useful. So thank you for joining me today. To learn more about the EchoRight app.
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