In medicine, the passive leg raising test is a bedside test to evaluate the need for further fluid resuscitation in critically ill patients.^[1]

The test involves raising the legs of a patient (without his active participation), which causes gravity to pull blood from the legs, thus increasing circulatory volume available to the heart (cardiac preload) by around 500 milliliters. The real-time effects of this manoeuvre on haemodynamic parameters such as blood pressure and heart rate are used to guide the decision whether or not more fluid will be beneficial.^[2][3] The assessment is easier when invasive monitoring is present (such as an arterial catheter).

The manoeuvre might be reinforced in a clinical setting by moving the patient's bed from a semi-recumbent position to a recumbent position with the legs raised. This is theorised to cause an additional mobilisation of blood from the gastrointestinal circulation.^[4][5]

Several studies showed that this measure is a better predictor of response to rapid fluid loading than other tests such as respiratory variation in pulse pressure or echocardiographic markers.^[5][6][7][8]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Trendelenburg position