The Analysis of Heart Rate Fragmentation for Congestive Heart Failure

Abstract

Background: Congestive heart failure (CHF), also known as chronic heart failure, is the end stage of all kinds of cardiovascular diseases with high mortality. Heart rate fragmentation (HRF) indices may be a potentially valid approach to diagnose CHF. Objective: The aims of this study were to: (1) find out the differences of HRF indices between healthy subjects and patients with CHF; (2) explore whether HRF indices can be applied to diagnose CHF. Methods: Open-access cardiac interbeat (RR) interval databases (Physiobank) were introduced here. Twenty subjects were selected from CHF RR interval database and normal sinus rhythm RR interval database, and included into CHF group and healthy group respectively. Then the values of PIP, IALS, PSS, and PAS were calculated and compared according to these 40 subjects. Statistic difference between two groups on same indice was computed. Results: PIP (Healthy vs CHF, 0.72 VS 0.77, P=0.006), IALS (0.72 VS 0.78, P=0.0036), PSS (0.86 VS 0.95, P=0.0008), and PAS (0.11 VS 0.12, P=0.8392) of CHF group are significantly higher than that in healthy group. Conclusion: HRF indices could be used as an efficient and easy tool to diagnose CHF. What's more, HRF indices are a valuable approach to analyse heart rate.