Kappa values and the consistency of lung scan reports

Full text: Ventilation-Perfusion lung scans were reported using one of the four categories: Normal, Low Probability, Intermediate, High Probability for the diagnosis of recent pulmonary emboli. Three Nuclear Medicine Specialists initially each re-reported 75 different scans to test intraobserver variations. Then all reported the same 205 scans, giving an individual report, followed by a consensus report to test interobserver variations. The analysis method used was Kappa Analysis (which tests whether performance is better than one would expect from chance). The results indicated that there was satisfactory agreement in all cases, and that all observers had a good correlation with the consensus report. Copyright (2000) The Australian and New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine Inc