Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · May 1994
Monitoring of right ventricular function using a conventional slow response thermistor catheter.
To investigate whether determination of right ventricular end-diastolic volume (RVEDV) and right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) can be performed with reasonable accuracy and reproducibility using a conventional slow response thermistor pulmonary artery catheter (CPAC) applying an adaptive algorithm. ⋯ Cardiac output (CO), RVEDV and RVEF were determined simultaneously with FRPAC and CPAC placed in the same pulmonary artery branch. Measurements were repeated 8 times sequentially in steady state normovolemia. A total of 130 measurements could be analysed. The coefficient of variation was 6.7 +/- 4.2% for CO(FRPAC) and 4.6 +/- 1.7% for CO(CPAC); for RVEF it was 9.7 +/- 6.2% (FRPAC) and 9.9 +/- 3.9% (CPAC); for RVEDV it was 11.6 +/- 4.8% (FRPAC) and 8.54 +/- 3.2 (CPAC). Mean difference (bias) was 0.06 +/- 0.39 l/min for CO measured with both methods, 19 +/- 35 ml for RVEDV and -3.3 +/- 6.5% for RVEF. CO(CPAC) displayed a strong correlation to CO(FRPAC) (R = 0.97, p = 0.001) as well as RVEF (R for RVEF(CPAC) versus RVEF(FRPAC) = 0.90, p = 0.001). R for RVEDV(CPAC) versus RVEDV(FRPAC) was 0.67, p = 0.001. We conclude that this animal study demonstrates good agreement between RVEF and RVEDV obtained with catheters equipped with a fast response thermistor or with a conventional slow response thermistor allowing accurate monitoring of right ventricular function with a conventional pulmonary artery catheter.