Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Feb 4, 2016; 5(1): 47-56
Published online Feb 4, 2016. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v5.i1.47
Use of venous-to-arterial carbon dioxide tension difference to guide resuscitation therapy in septic shock
Jihad Mallat, Malcolm Lemyze, Laurent Tronchon, Benoît Vallet, Didier Thevenin
Jihad Mallat, Malcolm Lemyze, Laurent Tronchon, Benoît Vallet, Didier Thevenin, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier du Dr. Schaffner de Lens, 62300 Lens, France
Author contributions: Mallat J contributed to conception, designed and wrote the paper; Lemyze M, Tronchon L, Vallet B and Thevenin D revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflicts of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Jihad Mallat, MD, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier du Dr. Schaffner de Lens, 99 route de La Bassée, 62300 Lens, France. mallatjihad@gmail.com
Telephone: +33-321-691088 Fax: +33-321-691839
Received: August 5, 2015
Peer-review started: August 6, 2015
First decision: September 16, 2015
Revised: October 12, 2015
Accepted: December 3, 2015
Article in press: December 4, 2015
Published online: February 4, 2016
Processing time: 171 Days and 11.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Early recognition and correction of tissue hypoperfusion are cornerstones in the management of septic shock patients. The venous-to-arterial carbon dioxide tension difference, which is a marker of the adequacy of cardiac output to global metabolic demand, is a helpful additional means to detect patients who stay under-resuscitated after optimization of O2-derived parameters. In this regard, its monitoring should help the clinicians for the decision of giving therapy targeting at increasing cardiac output.