Overview
Cardiac output sets reference forward output at the disease’s reference rate. The control displays a target from 0.5–15 L/min; the tooltip also shows resulting output. It is not an infusion dose or a direct contractility command.
At fixed resistance, flow changes pressure gradients. PVR and SVR changes can also affect the resulting flow, filling and pulse amplitude. Flow-sensitive valve gradients, heart motion and perfusion displays use the resulting state.
VF or ventricular standstill has no native forward output. Mechanical support can supply device flow; severe tamponade retains model constraints. Thermodilution and estimated Fick can still disagree because their teaching error models remain active.