Ultrasound dilution

Cardiac output is a useful measure of myocardial performance. Cardiac output monitoring is frequently performed in critically ill adults to guide physicians' treatment strategies. However, standard methods of determining cardiac output in children are not without risk and can be problematic secondary to their invasive nature and other technical problems. The COstatus system (Transonic Systems, NY), which is based on ultrasound dilution technology, works off in situcatheters and uses an innocuous indicator to allow for routine measurements of cardiac output and blood volumes in pediatric patients. The purpose of this study was to validate cardiac output measured by the COstatus system with those obtained by the clinical standard technique of pulmonary artery thermodilution.