Cardiac output monitoring

Description

Intensive and perioperative care share a common goal, namely to maintain 'adequate' organ perfusion throughout the body during the time course of critical illness or surgery. However, the only aspect of perfusion that is carefully monitored is pressure, whereas flow is simply ignored. One of the reasons for this may be related to the difficulties encountered in obtaining flow measurements. Cardiac output (CO) monitoring is one of the principal means of assessing the hemodynamic profile and tissue perfusion in the perioperative period.In this presentation we will  discuss various parameters affecting cardiac output and various modalities available to calculate cardiac output.