Alterations of Heart Rate Variability and Heart Rate Turbulence in Patients with Dilated Alcoholic and Non-alcoholic Cardiomyopathy

Abstract

The aim of this study is to document the imbalance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), expressed by heart rate variability (HRV) and heart rate turbulence (HRT), in patients with alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM) in comparison to those with idiopathic cardiomyopathy (ICM) and to evidence the existing differences regarding the long term evolution of these two subgroups. We studied HRV, in time and frequency domain, and HRT in 58 patients newly diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), admitted between Mar 2015 and Dec 2017 for arrhythmias and/or acute congestive heart failure (CHF) in the Cardiology Clinic of our hospital. Depending on the aetiology of DCM, patients with no other obvious aetiology were assigned to two groups: A - ACM, with history of heavy alcohol consumption and B - with ICM. We performed 24 hours Holter monitoring in patients and controls. Regarding HRV parameters in time domain, they were significantly depressed in patients with ACM, comparing to those with ICM. Referring to HRT, all patients had abnormal, positive values of turbulence onset (TO) and we documented statistically significant differences (p<0.001) between the two groups. All patients had normal positive values of turbulence slope (TS). We documented, both in patients with ACM and ICM, depressed values of HRV parameters in time domain, as well as pathological values of TO. During follow-up, we noticed a significant difference between patients with ACM and ICM regarding the duration of hospitalization. Keywords: alcoholic cardiomyopathy, idiopathic cardiomyopathy, heart rhythm variability, heart rhythm turbulence