[HSF] Pulmonary Artery Catheters !

[Nasser F. Abou'Seada]

How frequently do members of the forum use PA Catheter ? 
- Comments ??

NFA

HEART CATHETERS DO NOT BENEFIT PATIENTS 

(Editorial: Pulmonary artery catheters)
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7575/930 



Doctors should probably stop using pulmonary artery catheters because they
do not benefit patients, say doctors from Australia in this week's BMJ. 

The pulmonary artery catheter was invented in 1968. It enabled bedside
monitoring in critically ill patients by measuring heart output and
capillary pressure in the lungs and became widely used in intensive care
units. 

But reports of serious complications soon appeared and arguments for and
against its use have continued ever since. 

The most recent evaluation, commissioned by the NHS Health Technology
Assessment (HTA) programme, found that pulmonary artery catheters do not
benefit patients and concluded that withdrawing them from UK intensive care
units would be cost effective. 

Another recent trial in patients with acute lung injury confirmed these
findings, while an analysis of 13 trials reported no overall effect of using
these devices on mortality or length of hospital stay. 

So what should clinicians do with all this information? 

Given that the use of pulmonary artery catheters increases the risk of
important complications, continued use of these devices is difficult to
defend, say the authors. 

The onus is now on the proponents of the pulmonary artery catheter and
related devices to limit their use to clinical trials and to show that
protocols based on such devices do benefit patients, they conclude.