Technological Assessment and Objective Evaluation of Minimally Invasive and Noninvasive Cardiac Output Monitoring Systems

Cardiac output (CO) is a main determinant of oxygen delivery. Maintenance of adequate CO is thus a mainstay of hemodynamic management in perioperative and intensive care medicine. Methods to measure CO can be classified as invasive, minimally invasive, or noninvasive methods (fig. 1).¹  While invasive indicator dilution methods (i.e., pulmonary artery and transpulmonary thermodilution) remain the clinical reference methods for CO measurement,²  numerous minimally invasive and noninvasive methods to estimate CO have been proposed in recent years.^1,3–5  Understanding the principles of these systems and their limitations is crucial to be able to select the appropriate method for the individual patient and clinical setting.⁶  In this article, we describe minimally invasive and noninvasive CO monitoring technologies available in clinical practice and we discuss how to evaluate these systems…