Study limitations
Our study must be interpreted within the context of its potential
limitations. Possible inter-vendor and inter-software differences were
not investigated, nor were the impact of the operator’s experience level
on echocardiographic feasibility, time-consumption and reproducibility.
Furthermore, traditional parameters for assessment of diastolic function
are influenced by biological variation, and we sought to minimize these
by repeating the study over a short time, so that main source of
variation was imaging per se . Feasibility of TR Vmax might be
higher if other projections were attempted. The majority of the patients
were in sinus rhythm, which limits the generalizability of our findings
to patients with arrhythmias. Our cohort were also old and overweight
with suboptimal image quality. Reproducibility may be higher and
time-consumption lower in a broader patient population.