title: Early diagnosis of the older cardiac patient with multiple disorders.
abstract: In the critically ill elderly patient, multiple organ system involvement is common. The presence of acute--or acute on chronic--cardiac, pulmonary, and renal disease in the same patient makes clinical evaluation for heart failure or volume depletion notoriously difficult. When the clinician is faced with a bewildering array of hemodynamic possibilities in a critically ill patient, the Swan-Ganz catheter may allow a baseline definition of the patient's volume status and cardiac output, on which further therapy and prognosis can be based.
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D006328:Cardiac Catheterization / Q000009:adverse effects; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic