[Measurement of cardiac output with continuous thermodilution. b1 Clinical experience with the Intellicath-Vigilans system].
BACKGROUND
Thermodilution cardiac output measurements are commonly obtained by a manual bolus technique with a pulmonary artery catheter.


METHODS
A new thermodilution catheter has been developed which utilizes an integral thermal filament and provides semicontinuous online cardiac output. The response of this new device in 25 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting was examined. A total of 250 data pairs was obtained; the cardiac outputs ranged from 2.2 to 11.9 lts.min.


RESULTS
The linear regression is represented by the following equation: continuous thermodilution = 0.7196 bolus thermodilution +1.038. The correlation coefficient was 0.75; the mean bias was 0.493 +/- 1.034.


CONCLUSIONS
The new technique provides acceptable accuracy in many clinical situations except when sudden haemodynamic changes occur.
Procaccini
B
B
Dipartimento di Alta Specialità delle Malattie Cardiovascolari, Ospedale di Teramo.
Paladini
A
A
Marfoglia
C
C
Lattanzi
F W
FW
Miletti
E
E
Gallo
E
E
Clementi
G
G
D002302:Cardiac Output; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D013815:Thermodilution / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*