This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Howard S. Friedman, MD
The Long Island College Hospital Brooklyn, NY

JAMA. 1997;277(2):111.

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

To the Editor.

—The findings reported by Dr Connors et al¹ did not come as a surprise to the physicians at the Long Island College Hospital. In 1994, we presented our own findings at the Clinical Research Meetings² in which we came to similar conclusions. At least in part based on those findings, physicians at our hospital curtailed the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter. In 1978,I wrote an article³ demonstrating the lack of utility of RHC in patients having coronary angiography. However, until recently, this procedure was done routinely in many laboratories.

The use of the Swan-Ganz catheter in critically ill individuals is based on 2 concepts: (1) the catheter provides information required for clinical management that cannot be obtained otherwise, and (2) by the use of such information a patient's cardiovascular status can be "optimized" to better tolerate various conditions. The first notion is rarely true, and the second . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?