Cardiac Monitors

Cardiac monitors are devices with displays to show ECG, heart rate and other parameters on a continuous basis, usually used in the intensive care unit or operation theatre. Earlier cardiac monitors had just ECG and heart rate displays.
Current multi parameter monitors have invasive and non-invasive blood pressure, respiration, pulse oximetry, pacemaker sensing and various other monitoring possibilities. It can give out alarms if heart rate or any other parameter is beyond the set limits.
Sometimes the number of alarms is so many that ICU staff may develop “alarm fatigue” and stop responding to alarms. Hence alarm limits should be set appropriately, and monitoring should be done only when essential.
ICU central monitors are now commonplace in most intensive care units. They are connected to bedside monitors either by wired circuits or wireless links. They can display from a selection of various patient monitoring parameters depending on their configuration.
Most monitors display continuous ECG monitoring, sometimes more than one channel, depending on the programming, heart rate, respiratory rate, non-invasive and / or invasive blood pressure, pulse oximetry tracing and its instantaneous value (SPO2) and carbon dioxide level in air the person breathes out (ETCO2).
Various alarm settings are available for each parameter and the alarms can be disabled if needed in case of false alarm, either from the bedside or from the central location.
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