Continuous cardiac output monitoring by peripheral blood pressure waveform analysis

We introduce a novel technique for continuously monitoring changes in cardiac output (CO) by mathematical analysis of a single peripheral arterial blood pressure (ABP) waveform. In contrast to all previous techniques, our technique analyzes ABP variations over time scales greater than a cardiac cycle in which wave reflections are attenuated. To validate the technique, we performed six swine experiments in which peripheral ABP waveforms and gold standard CO via an aortic flow probe were simultaneously measured over a wide physiologic range. We report an overall CO measurement error of only 15.0%.