The Value of the Usage of the Pulmonary Artery Catheter in Adult Patient - Dissertation Example

Also known as the Swan-Ganz catheter, the pulmonary artery catheter is a monitoring device that is commonly used in monitoring the pressure on the right side of the heart and pulmonary artery. Pulmonary artery catheters can be found in the practice of cardiac surgery. Aside from detecting sepsis or heart failure, a pulmonary artery catheter can also be used when evaluating the side effects of pharmacological drugs on the patients’ heart function (Kanchi 2011; Maugh II 2009; Stover et al. 2009). A lot of healthcare professionals are debating whether or not the use of invasive.

The paper tells that the history of pulmonary artery catheters started in the 1970s when Dr. Jeremy Swan and Dr. William Ganz invented this particular heart monitoring device. Also known as the Swan-Ganz catheter, the pulmonary artery catheter is a monitoring device that is commonly used in monitoring the pressure on the right side of the heart and pulmonary artery. Pulmonary artery catheters can be found in the practice of cardiac surgery. Aside from detecting sepsis or heart failure, a pulmonary artery catheter can also be used when evaluating the side effects of pharmacological drugs on the patients’ heart function.

A lot of healthcare professionals are debating whether or not the use of invasive monitoring systems is more beneficial than the use of non-invasive ones. Since the use of invasive devices increases the “risks of deleterious complications”, several authors decided to examine the usefulness of other less invasive monitoring devices that could equally provide measurements for mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2), cardiac output, right ventricular ejection fraction (with some catheters), and intrapulmonary vascular pressures.

Several studies mentioned that there are no clear benefits with regards to the use of pulmonary artery catheters in standard care for elderly patients. Despite claimed benefits associated with the use of pulmonary artery catheters during cardiac anesthesia, several authors mentioned that the use of this type of monitoring device can only increase the risk of mortality among patients who received cardiac anesthesia.

For this reason, Kanchi (2011) revealed that the use of pulmonary artery catheter is not advisable in certain cardiac conditions like “coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with poor left ventricular function, LV aneurysmectomy recent myocardial infarction (MI), pulmonary hypertension, diastolic dysfunction, acute ventricular septal rupture and insertion of left ventricular assist device (LVAD)”.