Chest
Volume 121, Issue 4, April 2002, Pages 1245-1252
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Clinical Investigations in Critical Care
Changes in BP Induced by Passive Leg Raising Predict Response to Fluid Loading in Critically Ill Patients

https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.121.4.1245Get rights and content

Objective

To test the hypothesis that passive leg raising (PLR) induces changes in arterial pulse pressure that can help to predict the response to rapid fluid loading (RFL) in patients with acute circulatory failure who are receiving mechanical ventilation.

Design

Prospective clinical study.

Setting

Two medical ICUs in university hospitals.

Patients

Thirty-nine patients with acute circulatory failure who were receiving mechanical ventilation and had a pulmonary artery catheter in place.

Interventions

PLR for > 4 min and a subsequent 300-mL RFL for > 20 min.

Measurements and main results

Radial artery pulse pressure (PPrad), heart rate, right atrial pressure, pulmonary artery occlusion pressure (PAOP), and cardiac output were measured invasively in a population of 15 patients at each phase of the study procedure (ie, before and during PLR, and then before and after RFL). PPrad, PAOP, and stroke volume (SV) significantly increased in patients performing PLR. These changes were rapidly reversible when the patients' legs were lowered. Changes in PPrad during PLR were significantly correlated with changes in SV during PLR (r = 0.77; p < 0.001). Changes in SV induced by PLR and by RFL were significantly correlated (r = 0.89; p < 0.001). Finally, PLR-induced changes in PPrad were significantly correlated to RFL-induced changes in SV (r = 0.84; p < 0.001). In a second population of 24 patients, we found the same relationship between PLR-induced changes in PPrad and RFL-induced changes in SV (r = 0.73; p < 0.001).

Conclusion

The response to RFL could be predicted noninvasively by a simple observation of changes in pulse pressure during PLR in patients with acute circulatory failure who were receiving mechanical ventilation.

Section snippets

Materials and Methods

We first studied 15 consecutive patients who were admitted to the ICU for acute circulatory failure, which was defined as a systolic arterial pressure (SAP) < 90 mm Hg (or a decrease of > 50 mm Hg in previously hypertensive patients) and urine output of < 0.5 mL/kg/min for at least 2 h. All patients were receiving mechanical ventilation in a volume-controlled mode. Positive end-expiratory pressure was used in two patients and did not exceed 8 cm H2O. All patients were studied within the first 3

Results

The clinical characteristics of the patients studied are listed in Table 1.

Analysis of variance detected significant changes in BP that were induced by PLR positioning, by the return of the legs to the supine position, and by RFL, while it detected no change in BP values recorded within each phase of the procedure. Because of the stability of BP (ie, SAP, DAP, and MAP) within each phase of the PLR and RFL procedures, we expressed individual BP values as the average of the four measurements

Discussion

The main finding of our study was that changes in PPrad induced by PLR are proportional to the changes in SV that are obtained with a subsequent RFL. Therefore, simple measurements of BP during PLR could help to detect patients who will positively respond to volume expansion.

Conclusion

Our data suggest that in patients with acute circulatory failure who are receiving mechanical ventilation, the hemodynamic response to fluid loading could be predicted by simply measuring arterial pulse pressure changes during PLR. This may have two practical implications: (1) the existence of a cardiac preload dependence could be detected without the use of a Swan-Ganz catheter; and (2) a potentially harmful fluid-loading procedure could be avoided when unnecessary.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank Dr. Denis Chemla (Le Kremlin-Bicetre) for his helpful comments.

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