Why Cardiac Output?
 

The primary role of the cardiovascular system and the lungs is to maintain appropriate organ perfusion and oxygen delivery. Oxygen delivery is the product of Cardiac Output (CO), Oxymetry and Hemoglobin level.

It is organ perfusion and oxygen delivery that drive changes in cardiac function, vascular tone, respiration and urine output. Therefore, monitoring oxygen delivery is of great importance, especially in challenging hemodynamic clinical settings, or in those where such challenges may quickly occur and rapidly deteriorate. Understanding oxygen delivery in real time means understanding how to treat the patients’ heart function, fluid balance and respiratory function.
For example, these cases include sepsis, shock, general anesthesia and the peri-operative arena, Acute MI, trauma, heart failure exacerbation and acute or chronic hemodialysis.
In these settings, continuous, real-time insight on oxygen delivery enables fine-tuning of the patient’s fluid and oxygenation status and thus more frequent and intelligent modification and optimization of treatment.
Fluid Optimization
Using hemodynamic information to customize patients’ fluid resuscitation to their real-time needs is known as Fluid Optimization. Specific optimization algorithms which are based on measurement of a specific hemodynamic parameter around which fluid administration decisions are made, is known as Goal Directed Therapy (GDT). GDT protocols based on oxygen delivery or on proxies such as mixed venous oxygenation (ScvO2) and Central Venous Pressure (CVP) have been shown to reduce morbidity, mortality and cost of care around major surgery, in the Emergency Department (ED) and in septic patients (see references).
 
Unfortunately, adoption of these life-saving GDT protocols has been very limited due to the need for invasive venous and arterial lines which often imply cost, efficiencies, complications and a high-degree of user sophistication that are not relevant for most hospitals and clinical sites of care.
In order to enable GDT across the wide range of conditions and sites of care, a highly accurate, non-invasive and affordable CO monitor is needed. Cheetah Medical believes that the Reliant monitor is the tool physicians have been waiting for.