The American journal of cardiology
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Determination of cardiac output using acoustic quantification in critically ill patients.
The reliability of automated acoustic quantification (AQ) in yielding real-time left ventricular (LV) area, volume, and ejection fraction has been validated. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential of AQ in providing accurate immediate determination of cardiac output in critically ill patients. A total of 48 patients were studied. ⋯ There was a similar underestimation of cardiac output with manual analysis when compared with thermodilution. Given the absence of significant differences between AQ and manual analysis, this observation suggests that the bias is related to the echocardiographic determination of stroke volume, and not to errors from the automated border detection. It is concluded that AQ, besides providing information on LV volumes and ejection fraction, also can yield rapid measurements of cardiac output in most patients who are acutely ill.