Use of Flowtrac

[toughlife]

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Any of you guys have any experience with this tool?

If so, how reliable is it when compared to a swan or TEE?

 

[Hockeyguy]

A few of our liver attendings are researching this and basically finding that in healthy patients it correlates more closely than in sicker patients . Ceratin patients like your ESLD patients with hyperdynamic circulatory states it can be off significantly. This isn't published and they are still in the data collection phase so who knows. I did back-back liver Tx yesterday so we chatted about it a while. IMHO it seems like a TEE in skilled hands seems to give the most info. Who knows though I got a long way to go.

 

[toughlife]

A few of our liver attendings are researching this and basically finding that in healthy patients it correlates more closely than in sicker patients . Ceratin patients like your ESLD patients with hyperdynamic circulatory states it can be off significantly. This isn't published and they are still in the data collection phase so who knows. I did back-back liver Tx yesterday so we chatted about it a while. IMHO it seems like a TEE in skilled hands seems to give the most info. Who knows though I got a long way to go.

We have been using it in the SICU but I was not aware of whether the data supported its use in critically ill patients. Some of our attendings seem to think of it as a mini swan in terms of the how readily you can obtain hemodynamic parameters but I always wonder about their reliability in this pt population. Anecdotally, had a pt in septic shock who the device was placed in and who also had a TTE and it did seem to correlate for what it's worth.

 

[Duane E]

Just a student here, but I was in on a case with my preceptor doing a sternal debridement; patient had received a CABG a few weeks prior and developed an infection. As we were just in the process of waking the patient, the stroke volume variation on the Flowtrac began to increase and then the patient's bp wouldn't hold up. After the surgeon was called back in to verify that the pt. wasn't hemorrhaging internally, the pt was taken to ICU and kept on ventilation. We supposed that he developed a bacteremia from the debridement and the Flowtrac alerted us to the problem.