Urine volume and flow variation are some of the most important parameters required for the treatment of critical patients. Incorrect diagnoses are directly connected to the fact that medical staff has limited access to the data necessary in order to identify developing conditions in the patient. Therefore continuous automatic reliable fluid monitoring is crucial for ICU patient care. Overwhelming a critically-ill patient with excess fluid at a stage when they need to be "dry" (ie before extubation), or minimizing fluid therapy when a patient needs plenty of fluids (ie during fluid resuscitation), is highly detrimental. Therefore focused fluid management for each critically ill patient is crucial for favorable outcomes and should be guided by the use of reliable dynamic information available over time.
Unfortunately, while input fluids to these patients are thoroughly controlled and monitored by infusion pumps and syringes, urine output (UO), which is the most important output component of the patients' fluid balance, and actually the most clinically accessible parameter to reflect renal and organ perfusion, is traditionally assessed by subjective estimates of the ICU staff using conventional urine meters. In fact infusion pump dosages are actually determined by the UO.
Furthermore access to the history and trends of UO, provide a direct indication as to whether the choice of fluid management therapy has affected renal function. This clearly demonstrates the direct affect that reliable fluid monitoring information has on therapy and indicates the effect of therapy on UO and organ perfusion.
With the advent of Electronic Patient Records (EPR), providing reliable continuous information concerning the major component of the patients' output in the equation of fluid therapy is crucial and further enables the clinician to see the effect of this therapy on patient outcomes. In addition, the information can now be correlated with other parameters and medications in order to provide a reliable continuous prognosis of the patient’s fluid status, kidney function and the effectiveness of therapy.
