Whats the lowest cardiac index you have seen?

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Specializes in Neuro/Trauma SICU.

My patient last night had a Swan-Ganz and I was getting cardiac indexes of 0.8 and a SVRI of 9700!! She was post op and had lost about 3 liters of blood, but received 6 units of PRBC's in the OR and upon return her hgb was 15.0.

CVP was around 4-6 at the time. She was ST w/ PVC's , HR in the 120's to 130's and had 3 long runs of bigeminy for me. SBP 80-110. Post op CK-MB was 27.1, but had no ST segment elevation on the 12-lead, troponin was fine.

Clamped down or what?

I am not a cardiac nurse. I work in the neuro/trauma SICU. This patient was in for a corpectomy so she was on our unit.

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Specializes in Neuro/Trauma SICU.

No one?

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I've had a 0.9, quite a while ago ended up putting an IABP in. Sounds like yours needed a dilator with svri that high, thats pretty tight for the heart to be pumping against. Once that's lowered the ci should come up.

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I recently took over an AVR/CABG with a CI of 0.9, SVR of 2700, CVP 5, and on 2mcg/kg/min phenylephrine. Fixed him with 1000ml crystalloid and dobutamine at 5mcg/kg/min. Was able to wean the neo to off. It looks to me your pt was intravascularly dry and needed more fluid with a little inotrope/dilator.

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