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Published in: Clinical Autonomic Research 4/2017

01-08-2017 | Research Article

Reproducibility of 24-h heart rate variability in children

Authors: Bojko Bjelakovic, Dragana Ilic, Stevo Lukic, Vladislav Vukomanovic, Cojbasic Zarko, Zoran Stankovic, Jovic Marko

Published in: Clinical Autonomic Research | Issue 4/2017

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Abstract

Background

Over the last decades, time domain heart rate (HR) variability analysis has been explored in different pediatric clinical settings to obtain information on the cardiac autonomic tone. However, the consistency over time of 24 h time domain HRV measurements in children is not well-known.

Methods

We investigated the reproducibility of 24 h HRV time-domain indices (1 day apart), from 39 healthy children (9.5 ± 5.3 years, 56.4% girls). The parameters analysed included: standard deviation of all the adjacent NN intervals, standard deviation of the averages of NN intervals (the intervals between normal R-peaks) in all 5-min segments, and square root of the mean of the sum of the squares of the differences between adjacent NN intervals, uncorrected and corrected for HR. Reproducibility between two 24-h ECG recordings was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficients, standard error of measurement, coefficients of variation and Bland–Altman plots.

Results

For the analyzed time-domain indices, standard deviation of all the adjacent NN intervals corrected for HR showed best reproducibility with the highest intraclass correlation coefficient (0.987), the lowest coefficients of variation (5.5%) and the best level of agreement between two recordings as assessed by Bland–Altman plots.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that the standard deviation of all the adjacent NN intervals corrected for the HR parameter obtained from 24-h ambulatory recordings in children is consistent and reproducible over time, thus allowing reliable identification of cardiac autonomic tone in this age group.
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Metadata
Title
Reproducibility of 24-h heart rate variability in children
Authors
Bojko Bjelakovic
Dragana Ilic
Stevo Lukic
Vladislav Vukomanovic
Cojbasic Zarko
Zoran Stankovic
Jovic Marko
Publication date
01-08-2017
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Clinical Autonomic Research / Issue 4/2017
Print ISSN: 0959-9851
Electronic ISSN: 1619-1560
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10286-017-0445-3

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