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Continuous arterial pressure waveform monitoring in pediatric cardiac transplant, cardiomyopathy and pulmonary hypertension patients

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Abstract

Purpose

A continuous cardiac output monitor based on arterial pressure waveform (FloTrac™/Vigileo™; Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, CA) is now approved for use in adults but not in children. This device is minimally invasive, calculates cardiac output continuously and in real time, and is easy to use. Our study sought to validate the FloTrac™ with the pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) intermittent thermodilution technique in pediatric cardiac patients.

Methods

This was a prospective pilot study comparing cardiac output measurements obtained via the FloTrac™ and arterial pressure waveform analysis with intermittent thermodilution. Subjects carried the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension or cardiomyopathy, or were in the postoperative course after orthotopic heart transplantation.

Results

Enrolled in the study were 31 subjects, and 136 data points were obtained. The age range was 8 months to 16 years. The mean body surface area (BSA) was 1.1 m2. Bland-Altman plots for the mean cardiac outputs of all subjects with a BSA ≥1 m2 showed limits of agreement of −2.7 to 8.0 l/min (±5.4 l/min). Patients with a BSA ≤1 m2 demonstrated even wider limits of agreement (±8.5 l/min). The intraclass correlation for the PAC was 0.929 and 0.992 for the FloTrac™.

Conclusion

There was poor agreement between the PAC and FloTrac™ in measuring cardiac output in a population of children with pulmonary hypertension or cardiomyopathy, or after cardiac transplantation. This is in contrast to adult studies published thus far. This suggests that the utility of the FloTrac™ and measurements obtained from arterial pulse wave analysis in children is uncertain at this time.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dunbar Ivy MD, Shelley Miyamoto MD and Bill Pietra MD, and the cardiac catheterization laboratory staff for their support.

The authors declare there was neither financial support for this study nor any conflicts of interest with the manufacturer, Edwards Lifesciences, LLC. The authors retained full control of all primary data at all times.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Critical Care, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital, Aurora, CO, USA

    Sarena Teng & Angela Czaja

  2. Division of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital, Aurora, CO, USA

    Jon Kaufman, Heather Shockley & Eduardo da Cruz

  3. Research Institute, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital, Aurora, CO, USA

    Zhaoxing Pan

Authors
  1. Sarena Teng
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  2. Jon Kaufman
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  3. Zhaoxing Pan
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  4. Angela Czaja
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  6. Eduardo da Cruz
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Correspondence to Eduardo da Cruz.

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Teng, S., Kaufman, J., Pan, Z. et al. Continuous arterial pressure waveform monitoring in pediatric cardiac transplant, cardiomyopathy and pulmonary hypertension patients. Intensive Care Med 37, 1297–1301 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-011-2252-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-011-2252-y

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