Masimo announced that a new independent clinical study demonstrates Masimo PVI to be an "accurate index of fluid responsiveness" for critical care patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). The study, presented at the 29th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine in Brussels, Belgium, is the first to show the potential value of Masimo PVI to predict fluid responsiveness beyond the operating room (OR) into the ICU. Critically-ill patients are at great risk for volume depletion. Fluid administration is critical to optimizing oxygen delivery to organs and tissues, but giving too much fluid can induce life-threatening adverse effects. Therefore, parameters that aid clinicians in fluid management decisions may help improve patient outcomes. The most validated predictor of fluid responsiveness is pulse pressure variation (?PP). However, this parameter requires an invasive arterial pressure catheter, which is not appropriate for all patients, or special software, which is not available in all monitoring systems. Masimo PVI is not only noninvasive, enabling easy application on almost any patient, but is also easily obtained from existing or field upgradable Masimo Rainbow SET pulse oximeters and sensors that are already being used to monitor SpO2 and pulse rate. In the study, Marc Feissel, MD, and colleagues at Le Centre Hospitalier Belfort-Montbeliard (CHBM) in Belfort, France, along with a team of researchers from Assistance Publique–H?aux de Paris (AP-HP) in Le Kremlin-Bicetre, France, conducted a two-step analysis of 43 mechanically-ventilated patients with septic shock to: 1) identify the optimal Masimo PVI threshold for distinguishing fluid responders from non-responders; and 2) test the accuracy of PVI at the optimal threshold to predict fluid responsiveness. In the first step, researchers infused fluid (500 ml saline) in with pulse pressure variation (?PP) = 15% and performed passive leg raising in patients with ?PP 15% increase in velocity-time-integral (VTI) from echocardiography was used to determine fluid responsiveness. After comparing all data for the 25 enrolled ICU patients in the first step, researchers found that a "threshold PVI value of 20 identified patients with ?PP >15% with a sensitivity of 84% and specificity of 90%." In the second step, researchers found that a PVI value of 20 was an effective threshold for discriminating fluid responders from non-responders among 18 additional ICU patients, with PVI >20 predicting all 8 fluid responders and PVI