Cardiac index-guided therapy to maintain optimised postinduction cardiac index in high-risk patients having major open abdominal surgery: the multicentre randomised iPEGASUS trial

It is unclear whether optimising intraoperative cardiac index can reduce postoperative complications. We tested the hypothesis that maintaining optimised postinduction cardiac index during and for the first 8 h after surgery reduces the incidence of a composite outcome of complications within 28 days after surgery compared with routine care in high-risk patients having elective major open abdominal surgery.