Disagreement between standard transthoracic impedance cardiography and the automated transthoracic electrical bioimpedance method in estimating the cardiovascular responses to phenylephrine and isoprenaline in healthy man.

1. Impedance cardiography is a well-established noninvasive method to assess within-subject changes of cardiovascular function. We compared the standard approach (ZCG) which requires tedious signal analysis with an automated approach (TEB: NCCOM 3) with its own specific equipment, algorithms and equations in order to assess agreement of the method-specific measurements and calculations. 2. Ten healthy men were studied on two occasions with either ZCG or TEB, at rest and at the end of 5 min i.v.-infusions with 1 microgram min-1 isoprenaline and 100 micrograms min-1 phenylephrine. 3. There was good agreement for the method-independent changes (HR, SBP/DBP), but there were large differences for method-specific measurements: dZ/dtmax [TEB-ZCG] = -0.68, CI: -0.83 to -0.53 ohm s-1, PEP [TEB-ZCG] = -22.1, CI: -35.0 to -9.2 ms and QS2c [TEB-ZCG] = -16.5, CI: -32.4 to -0.6 ms and for the calculated stroke volume SV [TEB-ZCG] = 30.3, CI: 15.5 to 45.2 ml. The responses of dZ/dtmax and SV to isoprenaline and phenylephrine, although qualitatively similar, reached no quantitative agreement either. A substantial disagreement was evident for the STI responses to isoprenaline where TEB failed to detect the expected reduction of VETc and thus grossly underestimated the shortening of QS2c. 4. It is concluded that TEB-measurements and -calculations did not agree with standard ZCG, that the methods, albeit related, cannot be considered as interchangeable and that suspicion is justified that TEB might yield erroneous results under specific circumstances.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes