• Sabino Scolletta, Fabio Miraldi, Salvatore Mario Romano, and Luigi Muzzi.
• Department of Surgery and Bioengineering, University of Siena, Siena, Italy.
• Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg. 2011 Jul 1;13(1):52-6.

AbstractWe evaluated the accuracy of an uncalibrated pulse contour method called Pressure Recording Analytical Method (PRAM) compared with continuous thermodilution for cardiac output (CO) monitoring in patients implanted with a pulsatile left ventricular assist device (LVAD). Twelve adult patients implanted with the HeartMate I-XVE device were studied. CO was simultaneously evaluated by PRAM and by continuous thermodilution. Blood flow values displayed by the LVAD's console were also used for the comparison. Bland-Altman and linear regression analyses were applied. A total of 72 CO measurements (range 3.8-6.7 l/min) were obtained. Mean CO was 5.23±0.70 l/min for the 'hot' pulmonary thermodilution (ThD-CCO) method, 5.28±0.63 l/min for PRAM and 4.83±0.67 l/min for LVAD-CO. A high correlation (r=0.90), a good agreement (mean bias -0.04 l/min, precision ±0.38 l/min) and a low percentage of error (7.3%) were observed between PRAM-CO and ThD-CCO. A good correlation was found between LVAD-CO and either ThD-CCO (r=0.88) or PRAM-CO (r=0.86), but an overestimation of 10% was observed for both PRAM-CO (mean bias -0.44 l/min) and ThD-CCO (mean bias -0.40 l/min). Our results demonstrated good agreements between PRAM-CO, ThD-CCO and LVAD-CO. PRAM derives CO from a peripheral artery without calibration and may be a complementary tool in the hemodynamic assessment of patients supported with a VAD.

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