Inter-Rater Agreement and TEE-Surgical Agreement
When comparing scores between clinicians, one of the cardiac anesthesiologists (rater 1) had a higher degree of agreement with surgical scores (kappa 0.53) relative to the other (rater 2) (kappa 0.39). For mitral valves surgically rated as “complex,” agreement between surgical and TEE scores occurred 63% of the time for rater 1 compared to 31% of the time for rater 2. Inter-clinician agreement for intermediate and complex lesions was 88% and 67%, respectively, and overall agreement was moderate between the two cardiac anesthesiologists (kappa 0.62).