“No monitoring device can improve patient-centered outcomes unless it is coupled to a treatment that improves outcome. ” Michael Pinsky Introduction The Danish anesthetist Bjørn Ibsen first pioneered the intensive…
We take for granted the relative ease that we are now able to measure the rate at which the heart pumps blood, better known as the cardiac output. It is…
Systolic function and measurement of the ejection fraction are often the primary focus of assessments of the health status of the left ventricle (LV). However, the physiologic events occurring during…
1. Cardiac Output and Shunt Determination (see Chapter 3 ). A. Fick’s Principle. “The total uptake or release of a substance by an organ is the product of the blood…
Despite the exhortations of poets and philosophers, the heart is, after all, simply a pump. The ability to “look into any man’s heart” with the goal of understanding the function…
