Abstract
lf Proysen, the Norwegian storyteller forchildren, told about the clever little billy-goatkid who counted his fellow animals at the farm:I am one and the calf is two. . . . Not knowing thepurpose of counting, animosity arose among theother animals; they ran along chasing him to makehim stop. Eventually, they all ended up in greatdanger where the kid’s knowledge of countinghelped save their day. The tale illustrates our oppo-sition to numbers when the benefits are obscure. Inanaesthesiology and intensive care, we continu-ously make decisions on management and are inneed of reliable and precise information – whichmay come from numbers. We routinely monitorphysiological variables like heart rate, arterial bloodpressure, arterial oxygen saturation, and venousblood pressures. Some decades ago the extendedmonitoring with the pulmonary artery catheter(PAC) prompted a new understanding of criticalillness and boosted the interest in clinical physiol-ogy of the very sick patients.
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