OBJECTIVES To compare the safety of a conventional polyurethane transparent dressing and a novel highly permeable polyurethane dressing, as compared with standard gauze and tape, as site dressings for pulmonary artery catheters; and to rigorously determine the sources of bloodstream infections deriving from these catheters. DESIGN Prospective, randomized, clinical trial. SETTING General adu...

conclusions it is better to remove the unused devices safely to prevent and decrease their possible complications. case presentation a 50-years-old woman, with a history of breast cancer, had a permcath emplacement in right subclavian vein for a course of chemotherapy. the treatment for cancer seemed to be successful and the permcath had remained in its position without complication, for a coup...

References: 1. Gidwani UK, Mohanty B, Chatterjee K: The pulmonary artery catheter: a critical reappraisal. Cardiol Clin 2013; 31: 545−65, viii. doi: 10.1016/j. ccl.2013.07.008. 2. Aggarwal N, Kupfer Y, Yoon TS, Tessler S: Pulmonary artery catheter coiled in the main pulmonary artery trunk. BMJ Case Rep 2013; 2013. doi: 10.1136/bcr-2013-200049. 3. Starzyk L, Yao E, Roche-Nagel G, Wasowicz M: Sna...

BACKGROUND In spontaneously breathing cardiac patients, pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) can be accurately estimated from the transthoracic Doppler study of pulmonary artery and tricuspid regurgitation blood flows. In critically ill patients on mechanical ventilation for acute lung injury, the interposition of gas between the probe and the heart renders the transthoracic approach problematic. Th...

Complications derived from pulmonary artery catheter placement are about 3%-17%,1 from the most frequent and mild (carotid puncture, extrasystoles, etc) to the most severe (pulmonary artery rupture, pulmonary infarction, ventricular fibrillation, atrioventricular block, etc), and rare ones, such as intravascular catheter knotting, located preferentially in the right atrium (RA) or right ventric...

BACKGROUND Some observational studies suggest that the use of pulmonary-artery catheters to guide therapy is associated with increased mortality. METHODS We performed a randomized trial comparing goal-directed therapy guided by a pulmonary-artery catheter with standard care without the use of a pulmonary-artery catheter. The subjects were high-risk patients 60 years of age or older, with Amer...

Controversy exists concerning the use of the pulmonary artery catheter. Part of this controversy may be related to the incorrect interpretation of the data obtained from the pulmonary artery catheter. An understanding of the physiologic events responsible for the various waveforms may aid in the correct interpretation of data obtained with the pulmonary artery catheter. By recognizing the abnor...

The history of the pulmonary artery catheter spans almost 90 years from the first reported cardiac catheterization by Werner Forssmann (on himself!) in 1929. Some 25 years later, a balloon-tipped catheter was developed by Lategola and Rahn [1] and used in dogs, but the name of the catheter (and much of the credit for its invention) went to Swan and Ganz, whose now famous paper on the use of a b...

Clinical Medicine Vol 2 No 2 March/April 2002 101 The flow-directed pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) has been in clinical use since its introduction by Swan and colleagues in 19701. During that time it has become widely used in critical care units throughout the world and is now the most commonly utilised form of flow monitoring. The haemodynamic data obtained with a PAC are used to monitor and ...

It is recognized that exercise produces abnormally large increases in pulmonary artery pressure in patients with pulmonary vascular disease as a consequence of a variety of disorders, but the relationship between pressure and cardiopulmonary exercise performance is poorly understood. This lack of understanding is due (in part) to difficulty making measurements of pulmonary haemodynamics using c...