Is supra-ventricular arrhythmia a reason for the bad performance of the FlowTrac device?
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* Corresponding author: Andreas Umgelter andreas.umgelter@lrz.tum.de
II Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik, Klinikum rechts der Isar der Technischen Universität München, Ismaningerstraße 22, 81644 München, Germany
Critical Care 2007, 11:406 doi:10.1186/cc5154
Published: 12 February 2007First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
In their recent paper evaluating arterial waveform analysis as a tool to measure cardiac output (CO), Michael Sander and colleagues do not provide data on the heart rhythms of their cardiac surgery patients [1]. As the FloTrac (Flowtrac/Vigileo, Edwards Lifescience, Munich, Germany) device calculates CO from an arterial pressure-based algorithm, integrating vessel compliance and peripheral resistance effects, it seems plausible that these measurements may be influenced by cardiac arrhythmia.