Noninvasive measurement of cardiac output : Two methods compared in patients with mitral regurgitation

In search for the origin of the less reliable cardiac output (CO) estimations by means of electrical impedancecardiography (EIC), the authors hypothesized that cardiac valve pathology might be one of the reasons. Twenty-six patients were examined by means of echo Doppler (ED) and EIC. The cardiac valve status was obtained by means of echocar diography and color Doppler flow, while CO was obtained by means of both methods. Seventeen patients had no valve pathology (nVP) while nine patients had mild to moderate mitral regurgitation (MVR). The overall correlation between the calculation of CO by means of the two methods was good (r = 0.85, p < 0.001, mean differenceand standard deviation: 0.20 ± 0.74 L/min), while there was no significant difference between the paired values. After division into an nVP and an MVR population, the results showed an even closer agreement between the CO values in the nVP population (r = 0.88, p < 0.001, mean differenceand standard deviation: 0.15 ± 0.68 L/min). Further more, ...