Non-invasive measurement of cardiac output in obese children and adolescents: comparison of electrical cardiometry and transthoracic Doppler echocardiography

• Published in: Journal of clinical monitoring and computing Vol. 27; no. 2; pp. 187 - 193
• Main Authors: Rauch, Ralf, Welisch, Eva, Lansdell, Nathan, Burrill, Elizabeth, Jones, Judy, Robinson, Tracy, Bock, Dirk, Clarson, Cheril, Filler, Guido, Norozi, Kambiz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.04.2013; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Algorithms; Anesthesiology; Cardiac Output - physiology; Child; Critical Care Medicine; Cross-Sectional Studies; Echocardiography - methods; Electrophysiology - methods; Female; Health Sciences; Hemodynamics; Humans; Intensive; Linear Models; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Obesity - diagnosis; Obesity - physiopathology; Original Research; Prospective Studies; Reproducibility of Results; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Statistics for Life Sciences; Ultrasonography, Doppler - methods; Echocardiography; Electrical cardiometry; Cardiac output
• ISSN: 1387-1307; 1573-2614
• DOI: 10.1007/s10877-012-9412-7

The objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of electrical cardiometry (EC) for the noninvasive determination of cardiac output (CO) in obese children and adolescents. We compared these results with those obtained by transthoracic echocardiography. Sixty-four participants underwent simultaneous measurement of CO. Cardiac output was measured by EC using the ICON ® device. Simultaneously CO was determined by using transthoracic Doppler echocardiography from parasternal long-axis and apical view. The median age was 12.52 years (range 7.9–17.6 years) and 36 (56 %) were female. A strongly significant correlation was found between the CO EC and CO Echo measurements ( p  < 0.0001, r  = 0.91). Significant correlations were also found between CO and age (r = 0.37, p  = 0.002), weight (r = 0.57, p  < 0.0001), height (0.60, p  < 0.0001) and BMI (r = 0.42, p  = 0.001). The mean difference between the two methods (CO EC  − CO Echo ) was 0.015 l min −1 . According to the Bland and Altman method, the upper and lower limits of agreement, defined as mean difference ±2 SD, were +1.21 and −0.91 l min −1 , respectively. Compared to the transthoracic Doppler echocardiography, Electrical Cardiometry provides accurate and reliable CO measurements in obese children and adolescents.