Cardiac output assessment using oxygen consumption estimated from the left ventricular pressure-volume area

Use of a majority of structural variables (age, sex, height) to estimate oxygen consumption in the calculation of cardiac output (CO) by the Fick principle does not account for changes in physiological conditions. To improve this limitation, oxygen consumption was estimated based on the left ventricular pressure-volume area. A pilot study with 10 patients undergoing right cardiac catheterization showed that this approach was successful to estimate CO (r=0,73, vs. thermodilution measured CO). Further essays changing end-diastolic-volume in the pressure-volume area formula by body weight or body surface area showed that this last yielded the best correlation with the thermodilution measured CO (slope=1, ordinate =0.01 and r=0.93). These preliminary results indicate that use of a formula originated from the pressure-volume-area concept is a good alternative to estimate oxygen consumption for CO calculation.