| LiDCO Ltd is an international company which researches, develops, manufactures and sells innovative medical devices primarily for critical care and cardiovascular risk Hospital patients who require real-time cardiovascular monitoring while undergoing major surgery, intensive care or cardiology procedures.
The company’s current principal products are a patent protected sensor product (the LiDCOTM disposable system) and a patent protected monitoring product (the LiDCOplusTM Hemodynamic Monitor) which, when used together, provide a range of data concerning the beat-by-beat performance of a patient’s heart and blood circulation.
The LiDCOTM disposable system provides an indicator dilution method of measuring cardiac output using lithium chloride. The LiDCOplusTM Hemodynamic Monitor is designed to improve patient management by providing reliable beat-by-beat derivation of cardiac output from the existing arterial pressure waveform. Other parameters include real time oxygen delivery, systemic vascular resistance, stroke volume, heart rate, stroke volume variation and pulse pressure variation. The LiDCOplusTM Hemodynamic Monitor frees the experts and nurses from most of the work involved in cardiac output measurement and interpretation.
 | The findings of a recent study which utilized the LiDCOplus monitor, published in the journal Critical Care, has shown that achieving and maintaining increased oxygen delivery in high-risk patients immediately after major surgery reduces the patients’ risk of post-operative complications by more than one third and also reduces the length of time spent in hospital by an average of 12 days1. LiDCO’s technology is a unique technology in that it minimally invasively provides real-time measurement of the absolute level of oxygen delivery without the need for insertion of an invasive catheter into a major artery or the heart.
Implementation of a similar strategy in other hospitals across the NHS could result in estimated savings of £500 million annually. The protocol, which is based on the principle of Goal Directed Therapy (GDT) or patient optimisation, was conducted at St George’s Hospital, London1.
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