Effectiveness of Ultrasound Cardiovascular Images in Teaching Anatomy: A Pilot Study of an Eight-Hour Training Exposure

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the students’ progress in evaluating ultrasound (US) and cadaveric cardiac images and long-time retention of information. First-year medical students were invited to participate in four two-hour online lectures during one week voluntarily. The students were trained to recognize cardiovascular anatomical structures on US and cadaveric images during the intervention. The participants’ abilities to identify specific anatomical structures were tested before, immediately after and six months after the training. A group of second-year students without US training participated as a control group and filled the same test once. Ninety-one first-year students agreed to participate, and forty-nine completed all three tests. The performances in the correct identification of cardiovascular structures on the US images significantly improved after the training but significantly decreased after six months. In the intervention group, the accurate identification of cardiovascular structures was significantly higher on cadaveric images (80% vs. 53%, p-value < 0.0001, n = 91 at post-training; 70% vs. 33%, p-value < 0.0001, n = 49 at 6 months after training). The correct answers percentage score in the control group varied from 6.7% to 66.7% for US cardiovascular anatomical without a significant difference than the intervention group (p-value = 0.7651). First-year students’ knowledge of heart US anatomy proved less effective than cadaveric images, significantly improved after training and decreased over time, indicating the need for repetition reinforcement.

Efficacy of Handheld Ultrasound in Medical Education: A Comprehensive Systematic Review and Narrative Analysis

“…It may be unrealistic to expect long-lasting progress after a few hours of participation in training programs. The performances of the students in terms of identifying anatomical structures via ultrasound significantly drop at medium follow-up (6 months) in the absence of repetitions [44,58]. In ultrasound training, the consistency of the educational programs is essential, especially as their benefit has been shown to wane over time as ultrasound skills can diminish due to a lack of practice.…”