Cardiac Output Assessment by Transthoracic Electrical Bio-impedance in Patients of Acute Myocardial Infarction: Comparative Analysis with Echocardiography

Transthoracic electrical bio-impedance (TEB) has been proposed as a non-invasive and continuous method of cardiac output (CO) measurement, but it still has not found wide usages in clinics. The present study measured CO, using a new instrument NICOMON, and compared it with Echocardiography (ECHO) in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients.In the present study 100 patients of AMI were assessed by both ECHO and NICOMON for cardiac output and ECHO is considered as a reference method for comparison. TEB CO was measured by passing an alternating current and measuring the bio-impedance across the thorax. End diastolic volume (EDV), End systolic volume (ESV)Left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) diameter, measured by ECHO were used to calculate CO. Various statistical methods like “t”-testcorrelation coefficient (r) were used where found suitable.Results: Mean TEB-CO (4.03±1.11 l/min) was significantly higher (p0.001) than mean ECHO-CO (3.80±1.28 l/min) with a mean difference of 0.25±1.02 l/min.NICOMON measures CO non-invasively but, it needs more elaborative studies on a larger sample to establish it as an alternative method of ECHO for cardiac output measurement on regular basis.