To avoid use of a Swan-Ganz catheter and its attendant complications, new technologies have now become available to help the clinician perform a less invasive hemodynamic monitoring in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Among these, conventional echocardiography, the esophageal Doppler, pulse pressure analysis, the transpulmonary thermodilution, the indicator dilution and the thoracic electrical bioimpedance and bioreactance, all aim at measuring stroke volume and cardiac output by less invasive means and they are herein briefly reviewed
