Abstract

INOTROPIC AGENTS IN CRITICAL CARE: A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF UTILIZATION AND IMPACT

Muhammed Basith K. T.*, Sanoj Rajan, Jeffisha F., Mahadevamma Lingaiah and Swathi Ramesh

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Inotropic agents are medicine that change the force of the heart’s contraction. These agents have excitatory and inhibitory actions on the heart and vascular smooth muscle, as well as central nervous system and presynaptic autonomous nervous system effects and generally administered as they cause enhancement of cardiac output (CO) or vascular tone that has been severely compromised by life-threatening clinical conditions. Objective: Current use of inotropes in Intensive Care Unit. Methodology: This was a prospective and descriptive study in which 164 subjects were enrolled based on the criteria in Sagar Hospital, was assessed and evaluated by suitable statistical method. Results: In this study, the patients treated with inotropes were assessed and observed that the most commonly prescribed inotropes are nor-adrenaline (70%), dobutamine (10.4%)
and for combination therapy nor-adrenaline+dobutamine (10.4%), nor-adrenaline+adrenaline (3.7%). The effectiveness of inotropic therapy was assessed by comparing before and after values of MAP and HR, and it has shown that, out of 164 patients 85.4% were found to be stable, 12.8% were moderately stable and 1.8% were unstable. Conclusion: The study concluded that inotropes, which was given in critically ill patients was significantly helpful in increasing the cardiac output and thereby increasing the tissue perfusion and reducing the end organ damage. The study also revealed that most of the enrolled patients were stable and a few patients were moderately stable or unstable after the treatment which implies the effectiveness of inotropes in critically ill patients.

Keywords: MAP, HR, Inotropes.