• L Jacquet, G Hanique, D Glorieux, P Matte, and M Goenen.
• Saint-Luc University Hospital, Cardio-thoracic Intensive Care Unit, Brussels, Belgium.
• Intensive Care Med. 1996 Oct 1;22(10):1125-9.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the accuracy of cardiac output measurement obtained by a new continuous thermodilution cardiac output (CCO) pulmonary artery catheter compared to intermittent thermodilution (TCO) and the direct Fick method.DesignProspective open trial.SettingUniversity hospital, intensive care unit.Patients23 patients (15 surgical, 8 non-surgical) were monitored with the Intellicath pulmonary catheter. Cardiac output was evaluated by the three methods every 4 to 6h as long as the pulmonary artery catheter was necessary (8-96 h).ResultsThe correlation coefficient between CCO and TCO was 0.92, no systematic bias was observed, and the relative error increased from 13.9% for a cardiac output of 21/min to 23.7% for an output of 101/min. When comparing CCO and Fick, the correlation coefficient was 0.89, no bias was detected, and the relative error increased from 20.4% for outputs of 21/min to 27.2% for outputs of 101/min.ConclusionsCCO provides clinically acceptable measurements. At high cardiac outputs, the difference with other methods increases and the results must be cautiously interpreted.

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