Why add a straw?
I love the technology and I suspect the technical side and actual use case eludes a lot of people without a medical background.
What's to like about Uscom's technology?
Uscom's haemodynamic monitor is a product I wish was in every hospital. We use a lot of indirect ways to measure cardiac output, invasive and non-invasive, but none directly. It's practically theoretical because this is the first thing that measures it.
The Uscom Haemodynamic monitor does this directly, immediately, and non-invasively and can be done by anybody. The CEO A/Prof Rob Phillips is an ICU physician who created this while at University of Queensland.
https://youtu.be/MoDSFOxD8Bw
What the hell is cardiac output?
This is one of two academic sentences: Cardiac output is stroke volume (volume of blood that your heart pumps in one beat) x the number of beats in a minute.
What do we measure now?
The most common way to grossly measure cardiac output is blood pressure, which is indirect and non-invasive, and anybody can do it.
A less common one is the Pulse Contour Cardiac Output (PiCCO), which is indirect and invasive and usually only performed in ICU or somebody on their way to ICU. This is a line into an artery to constantly measure dynamic changes in blood pressure for people needing drugs that make the heart pump harder or artery constrict more when they are in shock.
The gold standard is an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound), which can be done bedside by only a skilled operator. Basically, they take some ultrasound images across a few planes, work out the measurements and come back with "Ejection Fraction." The Ejection Fraction is the percentage of the blood in the heart at rest that is ejected during contraction of the heart. An echocardiogram gives important structural information about the heart as well, but that is not so relevant for the purposes of this explanation.
Why use the Uscom machine?
The Uscom Haemodynamic monitor does this directly, immediately, and non-invasively and can be done by a nurse or a doctor with very limited training.
When would a doctor use it?
- Emergency or ICU - for patients in shock.
- When you just want to know the change in function rather than structure - if you're giving an old patient fluids.
- Stable patients to help with prescribing for antihypertensive drugs - if your blood pressure is high, we actually don't know if this is due to your heart or arteries unless you have a look and it would change the prescription.
- The evidence for these uses and more are actually published in peer reviewed medical journals and documented well on the Uscom website.