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Was Invention the Mother of Necessity?

Jesse B. Hall, MD

JAMA. 2000;283:2577-2578.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

It has been more than 4 years since Dalen and Bone¹ called for either a moratorium on the use of pulmonary artery catheters (PACs) for the management of critically ill patients or randomized clinical trials to demonstrate their benefit. Their recommendation was in response to a retrospective observational analysis by Connors et al² that reported increased mortality and cost in diverse patient groups monitored with the PAC.

Debate concerning the clinical significance of this and earlier studies rekindled and continues, taking place in medical journals, at meetings of professional societies, and in the minds of practicing intensivists. There are several issues related to the study reported by Connors et al² in 1996 that, in the aggregate, persuaded many that justification for an immediate moratorium on the PAC did not exist. First, since patients in that study were not randomized to management with and without a PAC, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.

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