Abstract
It is the anesthesiologist's responsibility to ensure adequate tissue perfusion. In many patients, standard hemodynamic monitoring provides inadequate management guidance. TEE is an excellent hemodynamic diagnostic tool that can be used as a monitor to guide therapy. The phrase "hemodynamic instability" is a reflection of anesthesiologists' ignorance of the root causes of blood pressure gyrations. If the use of echocardiography increases, this term could be eradicated from the perioperative vocabulary and replaced by solid diagnostic descriptors. As the population ages and more survivors of technically and technologically complex treatments join the general surgical population, anesthesiologists will care for patients with increasingly complex cardiovascular disorders, sometimes on an emergent basis. Intraoperatively, these patients should be managed with TEE. Similarly, rapid access to TEE should be standard practice in hemodynamic emergencies. If anesthesiologists are truly to fulfill their oft-stated claim to be perioperative physicians, then the time for general anesthesiologists to learn TEE has arrived.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 183-188 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia |
Volume | 24 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs |
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State | Published - Feb 2010 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- anesthesiology
- continuing education
- geriatric assessment
- heart arrest
- intraoperative
- kidney failure
- monitoring
- renal insufficiency
- resuscitation
- transesophageal echocardiography
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
- Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine