Brief interval heart period variability by different methods of analysis correlates highly with 24 h analyses in normals.
Heart period variability (HPV) measured from 24 h ECG recordings predicts mortality following myocardial infarction and may be a measure of cardiovascular health in the general population. Since epidemiologic evaluation of healthy people will require alternatives less intensive than 24 h recording, we investigated the relationship between HPV derived from 24 h and 5 min recordings, using two approaches for obtaining RR intervals. Template-matching (TM) algorithms were applied to 24 h ECG recordings from 41 normal subjects (mean age 35.7 +/- 13 years). Five min of ECG data during this 24 h period also were collected by an on-line microcomputer-based system for peak detection (PD) analysis. Intraclass correlations comparing the TM and PD approaches on the 5 min period were .80 or greater for all measures of HPV. Pearson correlation coefficients between the 5 min (TM) estimates and 24 h data and 5 min (PD) estimates and 24 h data exceeded .60 and .55, respectively, for all but one variable, with all p values < .05. Thus, in healthy adults, TM and PD approaches to HPV estimation from short segments of ECG data are highly consistent and the correlations between HPV obtained from brief intervals and 24 h measures were substantial, suggesting that assessment of HPV as a screening measure of cardiac autonomic control in healthy adults may be feasible.
Sloan
R P
RP
Behavioral Medicine Program, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, NY 10032.
Shapiro
P A
PA
Bagiella
E
E
Myers
M M
MM
Bigger
J T
JT
Steinman
R C
RC
Gorman
J M
JM
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000503:physiopathology; D002423:Cause of Death; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000401:mortality* / Q000503:physiopathology; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted