Year: 2001
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: ⅷ Objective To test the reliability of bimanual pelvic examinations performed in emergency departments by emergency medicine physicians.ⅷ Design Prospective observational study; 2 examiners each recorded various pelvic examination findings on 186 patients.ⅷ Setting A private university hospital and a public county hospital staffed by attending emergency medicine physicians who share an emergency medicine residency program.ⅷ Subjects Senior resident (3rd or 4th year) and attending emergency physicians.ⅷ Main outcome measures Percentage of agreement and percentage of positive agreement for cervical motion tenderness, uterine tenderness, adnexal tenderness, adnexal mass, and uterine size (within 2 cm).ⅷ Results The agreement ranged between 71% and 84%, but the percentage of positive agreement was much lower, ranging from 17% to 33%.Agreement for uterine size, within 2 cm, was 60%.ⅷ Conclusion The findings of bimanual pelvic examinations performed by emergency physicians in an emergency department have poor interexaminer reliability.The bimanual pelvic examination is considered an important element in the evaluation of pelvic and abdominal complaints in women, including emergency conditions such as ectopic pregnancy, pelvic inflammatory disease, and tubo-ovarian abscess.Many sources list pelvic exami-nation findings that would be expected with these disorders 1-4 but do not address the reliability or validity of the bimanual examination.For a diagnostic test to have clinical utility, its results must be not only valid (accurate compared with the cri-.........
Source: Western Journal of Medicine
Author: R. J H Close
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2037984485