Fig 1.
Representative patients of the patient sample.
a. 79-years old male patient with massive acute pulmonary embolism. A saddle thrombus of the pulmonary trunk can be appreciated. The Mastora score was for reader 1 109, for reader 2 75, the Qanadli for reader 1 50, for reader 2 40, Ghanima score was 4 for both readers and Kirchner score was 12.25 for reader 1 and 11 for reader 2. The time duration was longest for Mastora score for both readers, 463 s and 281 s, followed by Qanadli 53 and 35 s, Kirchner 36 s and 167 s and the Ghanima with 13 and 6 s. b. 84-years old female patient with segmental acute pulmonary embolism of the lower lobes. The Mastora score was for reader 1 45, for reader 2 29, the Qanadli for reader 1 22.5, for reader 2 20, Ghanima score was 2 for both readers and Kirchner score was 3 for both readers. The time duration was longest for Mastora score for both readers, 187 s and 151 s, followed by Qanadli 150 and 34 s, Kirchner 92 s and 32 s and the Ghanima with 26 and 9 s.
Table 1.
Overview of the pulmonary obstruction scores according to the reader.
Fig 2.
Scatter plot displaying the time duration for scoring in seconds (s).
For reader 1, Mastora took the longest time duration, followed by Kirchner et al., Qanadli and finally Ghanima (every test p<0.0001). For reader 2, Mastora also took the longest time duration, followed by Qanadli, Kirchner and Ghanima (every test p<0.0001). There were significant differences between reader 1 and 2 in regard of time duration. So, reader 2 was significantly faster for every score (p<0.0001 for every score).
Fig 3.
Bland-Altman plots displaying the excellent interreader variability of the scores.
The dotted lines indicating the 95% agreement between the readers. A. The plot for Mastora score. B. The plot for Qanadli score. C. The plot for Ghanima score. D. The plot for Kirchner score.
Table 2.
Intraclass coefficients of the investigated pulmonary obstruction scores.
Table 3.
Spearman’s correlation analysis of the investigated pulmonary obstruction scores.
Fig 4.
A. Spearman’s correlation analysis between time duration and the investigated scores. A weak positive correlation was identified with the Mastora score (r = 0.35, p = 0.014). B. A significant inverse correlation with the time duration was identified with the Ghanima score (r = -0.67, p<0.0001).