• DOI:10.1097/ALN.0000000000000326
• Corpus ID: 41882930

Corporate interests necessitate conflict of interest declarations by all authors.

@article{Kempen2014CorporateIN,
  title={Corporate interests necessitate conflict of interest declarations by all authors.},
  author={Paul Martin Kempen},
  journal={Anesthesiology},
  year={2014},
  volume={121 2},
  pages={
          431-2
        }
}

• P. Kempen
• Published 1 August 2014
• Medicine
• Anesthesiology

ours to evaluate clinical TEE imaging skills with simulation training.3 Because ours is among the first attempts to grade the quality of TEE images, we agree that further refinement and validation of the scoring system is needed. We, however, disagree with Drs. Fletcher and Sharma that no validity of the scoring system was demonstrated. In our study, the experts blinded from the identity of the study subjects graded the imaging angle, overall clarity, and visibility of clinically important anatomical structures. Therefore, we strongly believe that the scoring system has intrinsic face and content validity. In addition, in our study, the images obtained by the attending anesthesiologists received significantly higher scores than images obtained by residents, and images obtained by residents with prior TEE experience received significantly higher scores than images obtained by residents without such experience, demonstrating the construct validity of our scoring system. We therefore strongly believe that in the absence of a definitive standard, our effort to objectively measure TEE image quality was successful.