Letter
Applying logic to pulmonary artery catheter use
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* Corresponding author: Horst E Kunig kunig@kiski.net
1 PO Box 192, Saltsburg, PA 15681-0192, USA
2 Critical Care Medicine, Bioengineering, Cardiovascular Disease and Anesthesiology, 606 Scaife Hall, 3550 Terrace Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
3 University of Leipzig, Zentrum fuer Innere Medizin, Abteilung Intensivmedizin, Liebigstrasse 20, 04103 Leipzig Germany
Critical Care 2008, 12:421 doi:10.1186/cc6928
Published: 7 July 2008First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
Mansour and colleagues recommend not routinely using the pulmonary artery catheter to guide hemodynamic management in the intensive care unit, because the perceived benefits are largely intangible [1]. Pulmonary artery catheter monitoring of the right ventricular ejection fraction (RVef) and of the right ventricular end-diastolic volume (EDV), however, reflects powerful yet underutilized relationships that assess right ventricular performance.