Assessment of hemodynamic status in a shock state remains a challenging issue in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care. As the use of invasive hemodynamic monitoring declines, bedside-focused ultrasound has become a valuable tool in the evaluation and management of patients in shock. No longer a means to simply evaluate organ anatomy, ultrasound has expanded to become a rapid and noninvasive met...

In the previous issue of Critical Care, Takala and colleagues presented the results of a multicenter study to investigate whether the early presence of less invasive hemodynamic monitoring improves outcome in patients admitted with hemodynamic instability to the intensive care unit. The authors' results suggest that it makes no difference. We discuss these findings and compare them to the liter...

Introduction Hemodynamic monitoring is typically performed to ensure tissue oxygenation in critically ill patients in different settings. Until recently the pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) was widely used for this task in order to assess cardiac output (CO), the primary determinant of oxygen delivery. Today, a variety of minimally invasive hemodynamic monitors are available decreasing the wides...

Current hemodynamic monitoring of critically ill patients is mainly focused on monitoring of pressure-derived hemodynamic variables related to systemic circulation. Increasingly, oxygen transport pathways and indicators of the presence of tissue dysoxia are now being considered. In addition to the microcirculatory parameters related to oxygen transport to the tissues, it is becoming increasingl...