We validated experimentally the ability of hood indirect calorimetry to measure accurately VO2. For this purpose we compared cardiac output calculated from the Fick equation Q = VO2/(Ca(O2) - CV(O2)), in which VO2 was obtained by hood indirect calorimetry, to thermodilution cardiac output (Qth) measured simultaneously during cardiac catheterization in children (n = 16). Because FI(CO2) is a critical factor in hood indirect calorimetry calculations, we also assessed the consequence of taking into account measured FI(CO2) rather than using the usual standard value of 0.0004. We found a good agreement between Q and Qth whether we used experimentally measured FI(CO2) in ambient air (Qth = 0.89 Q + 0.39, r = 0.941) or standard FI(CO2) (Qth = 0.84 Q + 0.55, r = 0.930). However, VCO2 and R computed from standard FI(CO2) differed significantly (p < 0.001) from values derived from measured FI(CO2). This demonstrates that indirect calorimetry allows reasonable estimates of Q, VO2, VCO2, and R provided that the actual values of FI(CO2) are used.