The cientificWorldJOURNAL Clinical Study A Comparison of Third-Generation Semi-Invasive Arterial Waveform Analysis with Thermodilution in Patients Undergoing Coronary Surgery

Copyright © 2012 Ole Broch et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Uncalibrated semi-invasive continous monitoring of cardiac index (CI) has recently gained increasing interest. The aim of the present study was to compare the accuracy of CI determination based on arterial waveform analysis with transpulmonary thermodilution. Fifty patients scheduled for elective coronary surgery were studied after induction of anaesthesia and before and after cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), respectively. Each patient was monitored with a central venous line, the PiCCO system, and the FloTrac/Vigileo-system.Measurements included CI derived by transpulmonary thermodilution and uncalibrated semi-invasive pulse contour analysis. Percentage changes of CI were calculated. There was a moderate, but significant correlation between pulse contour CI and thermodilution CI both before (r2 = 0.72, P < 0.0001) and after (r2 = 0.62, P < 0.0001) CPB, with a percentage error of 31 % and 25%, respectively. Changes in pulse contour CI showed a significant correlation with changes in thermodilution CI both before (r2 = 0.52, P < 0.0001) and after (r2 = 0.67, P < 0.0001) CPB. Our findings demonstrated that uncalibrated semi