In this week’s episode, Keith and Courtney follow on from the discussion of the last episode on blood pressure, but this time discussing Invasive Blood Pressure (IBP) monitoring and how to set up all the equipment, how to place an arterial catheter and how to troubleshoot a dampened IBP trace.

With beat-to-beat information, there is so much more than blood pressure monitoring that can be achieved with an IBP set-up. Did you know positive pressure ventilation can affect the patient’s cardiac output and blood pressure? Well, well IBP monitoring, you can actually see it happening! Also, you now have a direct line for arterial blood gas sampling!

They hope by the end of the episode you will realise that IBP monitoring isn’t an unachievable modality in general practice to aim for, and Courtney encourages RVNs to add this type of intensive monitoring to their skill set.