The objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of electrical cardiometry (EC) for the noninvasive determination of cardiac output (CO) in obese children and adolescents. We compared these results with those obtained by transthoracic echocardiography. Sixty-four participants underwent simultaneous measurement of CO. Cardiac output was measured by EC using the ICON(®) device. Simultaneously CO was determined by using transthoracic Doppler echocardiography from parasternal long-axis and apical view. The median age was 12.52 years (range 7.9-17.6 years) and 36 (56 %) were female. A strongly significant correlation was found between the COEC and COEcho measurements (p < 0.0001, r = 0.91). Significant correlations were also found between CO and age (r = 0.37, p = 0.002), weight (r = 0.57, p < 0.0001), height (0.60, p < 0.0001) and BMI (r = 0.42, p = 0.001). The mean difference between the two methods (COEC - COEcho) was 0.015 l min(-1). According to the Bland and Altman method, the upper and lower limits of agreement, defined as mean difference ±2 SD, were +1.21 and -0.91 l min(-1), respectively. Compared to the transthoracic Doppler echocardiography, Electrical Cardiometry provides accurate and reliable CO measurements in obese children and adolescents.

The prevalence of overweight/obesity did not differ in children with congenital heart disease compared with age-matched healthy children; however, it is still high (18.2%). Obesity may represent an additional risk factor for the long-term cardiovascular health of congenital heart disease patients aside from the underlying heart defect.

Electrical cardiometry (EC) is a non-invasive and inexpensive method for hemodynamic assessment and monitoring. However, its feasibility for widespread clinical use, especially for the obese population, has yet to be determined. In this study, we evaluated the agreement and reliability of EC compared to transthoracic Doppler echocardiography (TTE) in normal, overweight, and obese children and adolescents. We measured stroke volume (SV) and cardiac output (CO) of 131 participants using EC and TTE simultaneously. We further divided these participants according to BMI percentiles for subanalyses: <85% normal weight (n = 41), between 85 and 95% overweight (n = 7), and >95% obese (n = 83). Due to small sample size of the overweight group, we combined overweight and obese groups (OW+OB) with no significant change in results (SV and CO) before and after combining groups. There were strong correlations between EC and TTE measurements of SV (r = 0.869 and r = 0.846; p < 0.0001) and CO (r = 0.831 and r = 0.815; p < 0.0001) in normal and OW+OB groups, respectively. Bias and percentage error for CO measurements were 0.240 and 29.7%, and 0.042 and 29.5% in the normal and OW+OB groups, respectively. Indexed values for SV were lower in the OW+OB group than in the normal weight group when measured by EC (p < 0.0001) but no differences were seen when measured by TTE (p = 0.096). In all weight groups, there were strong correlations and good agreement between EC and TTE. However, EC may underestimate hemodynamic measurements in obese participants due to fat tissue.