With the birth of “fluid responsiveness” physiology, there has been a slow and solemn drumbeat ushering the central venous pressure (CVP) up the squeaking planks of the hemodynamic gallows. Despite this, a few years ago I made a humble defense of the central venous pressure. Importantly, I was not proposing the CVP as a marker of fluid responsiveness or volume status; instead, I aimed to remind the reader that the CVP remains germane to cardiovascular physiology! Dismissing the CVP as “useless” is analogous to deeming “stroke volume” or “renal perfusion pressure” as forgettable – for neither variable definitively speaks about a given hemodynamic state.

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