Agreement of an echocardiogram-based diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension in infants at risk for bronchopulmonary dysplasia among masked reviewers

Objective To evaluate the agreement of an echocardiogram-based pulmonary hypertension diagnosis in premature infants at risk for bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Study design Echocardiograms from infants born <= 28 weeks post menstrual age were retrospectively reviewed with a standardized reading protocol by three pediatric cardiologists masked to patient's clinical history to determine the presence of pulmonary hypertension. Results A total of 483 echocardiograms from 49 unique patients were each reviewed by three pediatric cardiologists. Overall there was an 82.9% agreement on the presence of pulmonary hypertension among the three readers (95% CI: 78.4%, 85.4%) with a modified Fleiss' kappa of 0.759 (95% CI: 0.711, 0.801). Percent agreement between rereads was 92.4%, and modified Fleiss' kappa was 0.847 (95% CI: 0.750, 0.931). Conclusions Using a standardized reading protocol and echocardiogram-based definition of pulmonary hypertension, there is high inter- and intra-rater agreement for the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension in at-risk premature infants, suggesting echocardiography can be successfully used for clinical and research monitoring of pulmonary hypertension in infants.