Fig. 1

Effect of increasing quantities of data on revealing important distinctions. Four hours of mean arterial pressure (MAP) monitoring data (simulated) are shown for three different patients. With data recorded every hour (top row), MAP trajectories appear similar between patients, with a median MAP of 70 for all cases (dashed line). With data recorded every minute (bottom row), the median MAP is still 70 for all cases but important differences between patients become evident, with Patient 1 showing a relatively stable MAP, Patient 2 showing a precipitous drop in MAP at around 16:15, and Patient 3 showing a gradually decreasing MAP. In this case, the more granular data reveal differences between physiologic trajectories that were not evident from the sparse data or the median values