Edwards Lifesciences has launched its unique, minimally invasive heart monitoring device designed to enable physicians to more easily monitor patients' conditions in a critical care setting. The new FloTrac sensor connects to a catheter that is placed in the patients' arteries and works with Edwards' new Vigileo monitor to combine data from the arterial pressure line with other patient parameters to automatically calculate a patient's cardiac output on a continuous basis.
Until now, patients whose conditions required monitoring beyond simple blood pressure measurements, but who were not candidates for more invasive monitoring technologies, were left with few options. Of the estimated 13 million critically ill patients in the US who receive an arterial line each year, Edwards estimates that as many as one-third could benefit from the additional hemodynamic monitoring provided by the FloTrac sensor.
Traditionally, cardiac information has been gathered through pulmonary artery catheters. While these catheters provide the most comprehensive data on cardiac status, they are placed directly inside the patient's heart. Edwards, developed the FloTrac sensor so clinicians could less invasively monitor key hemodynamic performance parameters in a greater number of patients. Clinical data presented earlier this year from international, multi-site study of more than 80 patients at the International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine in Brussels, Belgium, by Dr William McGee, Director of ICU Quality Assurance at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, demonstrated that the FloTrac technology has reliability comparable to the Swan-Ganz catheter.
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