Heart Rate Variability

Validity of ultra short recordings of autonomic balance indexes of sujetcs in rest

Abstract

Objective: the minimum ultra-short-term heart rate variability (HRV) recording times, less than 300 seconds, thus the indices extracted from the Poincaré diagram, SS and S/PS, and indicators of autonomic balance, may be equivalent to those obtained by short-term HRV (5min).
Method: this study included a group of 23 subjects. The RR series, extracted from the electrocardiogram signal, were recorded for 300s at rest and series of 60s, 90s, 120s and 240s were obtained. The HRV indices were calculated for each series and were compared with the corresponding index of the 300s series, using different methods of concordance analysis, Pearson correlation, Bland-Altman and Delta of Cohen.
Results: the SS index in records of a minimum of 120s showed to be equivalent to indexes of short-term HRV and ln(S/PS) of 90s.
Conclusions: Equivalent ultra-short-term HRV indices were obtained for short-term HRV analysis (5min), this reduction in measurement times will allow a more wide use of HRV for health monitoring health and well-being of people. Thus allowing physical trainers to obtain a better performance in the registration and processing of the information obtained.
The results found motivate the performance of new studies to analyze the behavior of these indicators in different populations and with the use of different pre-processing methods of the RR series.