Echo is a Good, Not Perfect, Measure of Cardiac Output in Critically Ill Surgical Patients

BACKGROUNDCompared with a pulmonary artery catheter (PAC), transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) has been shown to have good agreement in cardiac output (CO) measurement in nonsurgical populations. Our hypothesis is that the feasibility and accuracy of CO measured by TTE (CO-TTE), relative to CO meas