Early cardiorespiratory prognostic patterns in multiple trauma patients.

Hemodynamic parameters were monitored for one week ( in greatest detail during the first 24 hours) in 50 severely injured people who had been admitted to the hospital for treatment within one hour after the accident and, as judged by the type of injury, had probably lost more than 1 1/2 liters of blood. The estimations included not only blood pressure, heart rate (HR) and shock index but also the cardiac index (CI), pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP), pulmonary capillary pressure (PCP), and parameters of oxygen transport were determined with the aid of Swan-Ganz catheters, CI, SI, and left ventricular stroke work index (LVSWI) were decreased, PAP, total pulmonary resistance (TPR), and total systemic resistance (TSR), were increased from the very beginning in the nonsurviving group, with a high prediction of vital outcome. The Swan-Ganz catheter is valuable in such cases in obtaining early prognostic evaluation and in controlling therapy - ie, volume replacement, vasodilation, and adrenergic therapy.