Rapid Non-invasive Bedside Determination of Inotropy: A Feasibility Study

Inotropy as a concept is well known to all clinicians but to date it has been difficult to measure in the acute situation. Treatment of pathological inotropy is usually on the basis of interpretation of surrogates of inotropy such as blood pressure, skin perfusion or urine output which are notoriously unreliable indices even in the hands of experienced clinicians. We conclude that Inotropy can be measured rapidly as a bedside investigation and can be used in the assessment and treatment of acute patients.