Monitoring in resuscitation

It is as important to monitor the passage of time in the resuscitation effort as it is to follow the physiologic parameters. The goals in resuscitation are based on restoring cellular metabolism to a level consistent with optimum survival. The level of invasiveness of monitoring is dictated by the extent to which the patient fails to respond to initial therapy or is judged to be intolerant of even short periods of decompensation. The conduct of a resuscitation must constantly be reassessed in the light of the patient's response to the previous intervention. This response can only adequately be gauged by continual physiologic data gathering with calculation of all relevant derived data and their display in a logical, orderly, and digestible fashion--preferably with the help of a computer.