Determining Cardiac Output

by Milan Sharma

Submitted : Spring 2020

The cardiac output, or rate of blood flow, in a patient can determine vital information to those in the medical field on multiple levels. Simply understanding that the cardiac output is a series of hemodynamic measurements that can aid surgeons and physicians knowledge when managing patient vitals post operation, but most importantly used on patients with developing cardiac conditions (1). Patients undergoing intense traumatic surgeries or are diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases are highly at risk for cardiac arrest as well as developing tissue and muscle damage due to possible impared or corrupt blood flow within the body (1). A method to determine the cardiac output of said patient is a medical procedure called the dye dilution method paired with a catheter probe to collect the concentration data . The data collected by the dye dilution method can be used to solve for the bloods rate of flow with the equation F=D over the integral of c(t) times dt between 0 and T while approaching infinite. However the dye dilution method only relates concentration versus time and does not provide a proper function to solve the integral based on the equation (3). Therefore the Simpsons Rule Approximation can be used to solve the integral and complete the equation to solve for blood flow rate, which in turn can determine multiple medical diagnosis (4).

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