Abstract
Dear Sir,
First of all, we want to thank Gary Norsworthy for his interesting comments. During the design of the study, we questioned if we needed to practise the second technique before starting our study and if so, how long this learning period should take. Because all study participants had reasonable experience in palpating thyroid glands with the classic technique and because a learning curve indeed differs from person to person, we did not include a learning period. Despite the lack of training in technique 2 (T2), we found very good repeatabilities which was also stated in our article. This can indicate that persons that have experience with one of both thyroid gland palpation techniques can learn the other technique rather quickly and not over a period of years.
In conclusion, we agree that experience plays an important role in the value of subjective diagnostic tests. Therefore, we mentioned in our article that the better repeatability of technique 1 (T1) compared to T2 ‘could be due to bias towards T1 because all clinicians performing the palpations were more familiar with T1 than with T2’. Therefore, the main conclusion of our article was that ‘both techniques for thyroid gland palpation in cats have a very good within- and good between-examiner agreement’.