[Clinical monitoring: numerical value is the body and timing is life]

Monitoring is more common in today's clinical practice, especially in critical care medicine. Any confusion between monitoring and diagnosis will mislead clinical behavior which could be disastrous. A monitoring parameter usually focuses on a specific physiological point and represents the immediate situation of the point with quantitative values. A series of numerical value of monitoring parameters indicate physiological change or a disease process. If the clinical intervention targeted at the point, the numerical value represents the strength and the direction of the intervention. However, monitoring itself is not a therapeutical method. Only when medical personnel understand the characteristics of the parameters totally and use them to guide feedback management, and then to constitute accurate implementation of intervention methods, monitoring is worth to practise, and it is of clinical significance.