Highly Accessed Letter

ICU survival and the central to mixed venous oxygen difference

Vinayak Jha* and Guillermo Gutierrez

Author Affiliations

The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, 2150 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 5-425, Washington DC 20037, USA

For all author emails, please log on.

Critical Care 2011, 15:436 doi:10.1186/cc10260


See related research by van Beest et al., http://ccforum.com/content/14/6/R219

Published: 30 June 2011

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

We read with interest the recent study on central venous saturation (ScvO2) and mixed venous saturation (SvO2) in 53 patients with severe sepsis [1]. For several reasons, however, we feel the authors' broadly stated conclusion that 'a positive (ScvO2 - SvO2) value is not associated with improved outcome' is unwarranted.