• M C Cabrera Schulmeyer, R A Vega Sepúlveda, and E G Santelices Cuevas.
• Servicio de Anestesiología, Universidad de Valparaíso, Hospital Clínico Dr. Raúl Yazigi Fuerza Aérea de Chile, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile. Carol218@vtr.net
• Rev Esp Anestesiol Reanim. 2004 Aug 1; 51 (7): 367-72.

IntroductionIntraoperative transesophageal echocardiography is used to study cardiac structure and function. Cardiac output is measured by calculating the velocity with which a volume of blood travels a predetermined area. Output can be assessed at the mitral valve by parallel alignment of the Doppler transducer to measure flow velocity.ObjectiveTo compare cardiac output measurements from transesophageal echocardiography with measurements performed by the standard clinical technique of thermodilution.Patients And MethodsCardiac output measurements obtained by thermodilution and by echocardiography at the mitral valve were compared in a prospective study during 34 cardiac surgery procedures.ResultsCardiac output measurements ranged from 2.3 L min(-1) to 7.8 L min(-1) (mean 4.27 +/- 0.125 L min(-1) for measurements made by Doppler echocardiography and from 1.9 L min(-1) to 8.1 L min(-1) (mean 4.36 +/- 0.124 L min(-1)) for measurements made by thermodilution. The correlation between the methods was high (r = 0.926, p = 0.00001).ConclusionIntraoperative measurement of cardiac output by transesophageal Doppler echocardiography at the mitral valve is easy and correlates highly with the clinical method of thermodilution used at present. Use of the technique will widen the spectrum of information provided by echocardiography, which is a safe, minimally invasive technique.

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