Avalia？？o da variabilidade de interven？？es baseadas no cateter de artéria pulmonar: experiência brasileira

background and objectives: use of pulmonary artery catheter (pac) is still a debatable issue, mainly due to questions raised about its security and efficacy. this study reproduced in a sample of brazilian physicians, another one conducted amidst american doctors, in which was pointed out the heterogeneity of clinical decisions guided by data obtained from pac. methods: during the brazilian congress of intensive care medicine (curitiba 2004), doctors were asked to answer a survey form with three vignettes. each of them contained pac data and one half of the surveys contained echocardiographic information. every doctor was asked to select one of six interventions for each vignette. a homogeneous answer was considered when it was selected by at least 80% of the respondents. results: two hundred and thirty seven doctors answered the questionnaires. they selected completely different therapeutic interventions in all three vignettes and none of the interventions achieved more than 80% agreement. variability persisted with the choices guided by echocardiography. conclusions: as in the original study, we observed total heterogeneity of therapeutic interventions guided by cap and echocardiography. these results could be caused by lack of knowledge about basic pathophysiologic concepts and maybe we had to improve its teaching at the medical school benches.