Impedance cardiography – Old method, new opportunities. Part I. Clinical applications

Monitoring of cardiovascular hemodynamic changes requires a very expensive and highly specialized equipment and skilled medical personnel. Up to the present time, an inexpensive, non-invasive and easy-to-use method which, like Doppler echocardiography, magnetic resonance angiography or radionuclide imaging, would assess hemodynamics of the cardiovascular system was not available. A method known as impedance cardiography (ICG) or thoracic electrical bioimpedance cardiography (TEBC) meets those criteria. It is non-invasive, which is of a particular advantage over the conventional methods that require catheterization. As a result, the patient is not at risk of possible complications and the procedure is less expensive and easier. Impedance cardiography, despite its non-invasive character, has not been so far extensively used for monitoring of hemodynamic parameters in hospitalized patients. Various authors report that attempts have been continued to compare the results from ICG and those obtained by other diagnostic methods. This paper presents the use of impedance cardiography in diagnosis of hypertension, cardiac insufficiency, differentiating the causes of acute dyspnea, as well as in assessing the effects of cardiac rehabilitation in patients with heart failure.