Cardiac output (CO) monitoring is a valuable tool for the diagnosis and management of critically ill patients. In the critical care setting, few studies have evaluated the level of agreement between CO estimated by transthoracic echocardiography (CO-TTE) and that measured by the reference method, pulmonary artery catheter (CO-PAC). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the precision and accuracy of CO-TTE relative to CO-PAC and the ability of transthoracic echocardiography to track variations in CO, in critically ill mechanically ventilated patients.

In critically ill mechanically ventilated patients, CO-TTE is an accurate and precise method for estimating CO. Furthermore, CO-TTE can accurately track variations in CO.

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