Volume Responsiveness By Ultrasound Of Carotid Blood Flow In Patients With Cardiogenic Shock

Resuscitation of critically ill patients has changed since the advent of goal directed therapy. Today, practitioners providing fluid resuscitation are attentive of the danger associated with volume depletion while being aware of the morbidity of volume overload. Fluid resuscitation must be rapid, precise, and individually tailored to each patient based on reliable data obtained by various means inside ICU setting. There is no non-invasive method that can reliably and accurately identify fluid responsiveness. As such, in patients with undifferentiated shock, treatment often involves empiric fluid administration, in the hopes that volume expansion will increase preload, which will then serve to increase cardiac output (CO). However, for patients on the flat portion of the Starling curve, aggressive fluid administration results in no appreciable increase in CO and may be detrimental to hemodynamically unstable patients.