Impedance cardiography

Impedance cardiography (other notation: impedance cardiography ) is the non-invasive (bloodless) measurement of hemodynamic parameters of the heart (such as stroke volume , cardiac output ). These parameters play a crucial role in the monitoring of intensive care patients.

In contrast to invasive methods (such as thermodilution , Fick's method), in which a catheter has to be inserted , impedance cardiography uses fluctuations in the body resistance across the thorax during a cardiac period . For this purpose, a small measuring current of constant current strength is passed into the body and the change in impedance (the alternating current resistance ) is determined via the change in voltage . The hemodynamic parameters can be determined from this curve. In general, impedance cardiography offers a good correlation to the invasive standard methods, but is far less complicated due to its non-invasiveness. Another advantage of impedance cardiography arises from the beat-to-beat measurement of the stroke volume. This allows the development of the patient to be assessed and monitored in real time.

Web links

• Impedance cardiography at ipms.fraunhofer.de
• Impedance cardiography at medis.company

Individual evidence

1. ^ Impedance cardiography research document
2. ↑ Cardiac output (CO) with impedance cardiography (ICG) from cnsystems-med.de, accessed on May 10, 2016.

This article is about a health issue. It is not used for self-diagnosis and does not replace a diagnosis by a doctor. Please note the information on health issues !