Recent Trends in Impedance Cardiography-A Review

Heart related diseases are the major cause of death in many developing countries. The hemodynamic status monitoring is essential for Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) patients in Intensive Care Units (ICU). Cardiac Output (CO) measurement indicates the volume of blood pumped by the heart per minute, provides the information about perfusion of oxygen with body's demand. Using the Impedance Cardiography signal, various valvular heart diseases (VHD) such as mitral & aortic insufficiency, mitral & aortic stenosis and myocardial infarction can be diagnosed. The different techniques for measurement of Cardiac Output (CO) are echocardiography, chest radiography and dilution methods and they are normally used. The Cardiac Output can be measured either by invasive or minimal invasive or non-invasive methods. In this paper an overview literature survey of the non-invasive methods for measuring the cardiac output by the impedance cardiography is compared with invasive method.