Postoperative monitoring in critical care patients has become a widening field over the past few decades. Improvements in outcome can be related to advances in this field as well as in intraoperative management and preoperative assessment.

Measurement of transcutaneous oxygen tension (tcpO₂) has gained worldwide acceptance as a simple and effective method of evaluating cutaneous blood flow in settings where skin viability and the adequacy of skin blood flow are of major concern. An example of such a setting is the non-invasive vascular laboratory at...

Transcutaneous monitoring of carbon dioxide plays an important role during short-term and long-term treatments for ventilatory failure. Progress during short-term treatments can be judged through tcpCO₂ recordings - especially to avoid crash reintubation of patients who have been weaned off invasive ventilation....