FloTrac/Vigileo system monitoring in acute-care surgery: current and future trends.

As acute critical-care surgery evolves, it is imperative to introduce reliable devices that can intraoperatively assess a patient's cardiovascular functions. Owing to the fact that traditional methods are usually invasive, non- or less-invasive innovations have attracted the attention of clinicians in recent decades. The FloTrac system monitors cardiovascular performance by analyzing peripheral arterial waveforms and a preset database, and it decreases the invasiveness by using a pulmonary arterial catheter. The reliability of cardiac output measurements was confirmed in many critically ill subjects in cardiac surgeries and intensive care units. Moreover, the FloTrac system is easy to set up, and interpreting the information is simple. The FloTrac system also provides a useful preload predictor, that is, stroke volume variation (SVV), for fluid management, which has been proven to enhance surgical safety in the treatment of critically ill patients. Goal-directed therapy guided by SVV and other hemodynamic...