Current concepts in fluid therapy and non-invasive haemodynamic monitoring

Advantages of goal directed therapy (GDT) have recently become more and more difficult to prove in the face of newly implemented protocolised patient care approaches that also clearly improve patient outcome. However, individualised approach using GDT has been suggested to be superior to protocolised care and large meta-analyses still consistently show beneficial effects of GDT. Concerns of invasiveness were the reason why some patients’ haemodynamics was not measured and in turn were not included in any GDT protocols. Recently, non-invasive devices to measure arterial blood pressure and haemodynamic variables emerged, and although they are very appealing and easy to use, they require further validation both by comparison to more invasive methods and by outcome trials.