Low-frequency heart rate variability: reproducibility in cardiac transplant recipients and normal subjects

Abstract

Heart rate variability is a measure of autonomic nervous influence on the heart. It has been suggested that it could be used to detect autonomic reinnervation to the transplanted heart, but the reproducibility of the measurement is unknown. In the present study, 21 cardiac transplant recipients and 21 normal subjects were recruited. Three measurements of heart rate variability were performed during the day: in the morning, in the early afternoon and in the late afternoon. These tests were then repeated 1 week later and then again 1 week after that, making nine tests in all. The within-subject S.D. was 0.49 log units in normal subjects and 0.79 log units in transplant recipients. In both cases, this is about 15% of the population range. There was significant variation in heart rate variability between different times of day in both groups, and from day to day in transplant recipients. It was concluded that the reproducibility of measurements of heart rate variability is low, and that differences between measurements performed at different times of day should be interpreted with caution.

Early Denervation and Later Reinnervation of the Heart Following Cardiac Transplantation: A Review

“…[7][8][9]33 In addition, MIBG uptake showed only partial sympathetic reinnervation post-HTx in some but not all recipients, never reaching global cardiac reinnervation. 35,47 Furthermore, heart rate variability (HRV) was noted to be different in transplant recipients from time to time during the day, 52 which could be evidence for the heterogeneity of reinnervation.…”

Reliability of heart rate variability in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus

“…Our results are comparable with previous reliability studies in healthy subjects [11] and post-myocardial infarction patients [14], which reported similar 95% limits of random variation for time domain parameters, albeit narrower limits for frequency domain parameters. However, similarly poor absolute reliability of spectral measures has been identified in patients with chronic heart failure [15] and cardiac transplant recipients [16].…”

Reliability of three commercially available heart rate variability instruments using short‐term (5‐min) recordings

“…These are, overall, slightly higher than those generated by all three systems used in the present study. Lord et al (2001) studied the reliability of the LF oscillations in the frequency domain to assess this variable's usefulness in intervention studies. The LF component was found to show poor reliability in both normal subjects (CV ¼ 45%) and in heart transplant recipients (CV ¼ 76%).…”

“…There is a significant body of data regarding the reliability of 24-h recordings (Zuanetti et al, 1991;Durant et al, 1992;Ziegler et al, 1999;Yi et al, 2000), yet investigations into the reliability of short-term measures of HRV are less numerous. Of those published, many concern the use of HRV during tests or manoeuvres (Bootsma et al, 1996;Jauregui-Renaud et al, 2001;Lord et al, 2001). There is a scarcity of studies concerning HRV measurements made under stable, resting conditions and published results vary in terms of estimates of reliability (Ponikowski et al, 1996;Sinnreich et al, 1998;Marks & Lightfoot, 1999).…”