[Study of the autonomous nervous system with heart rate spectral analysis in acute myocardial infarction]

Characterize power spectrum pattern of heart rate variability (HRV) and assessment of relative cardiac nervous system in patients with acute myocardial interaction of sympathetic and parasympathetic infarction. We also compared the spectral power with some known prognostic risk variables.

Study of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and sedentary healthy subjects sex matched.

19 postinfarction patients aged 55.7 +/- 10.5 years and 19 healthy subjects controls aged 53.9 +/- 11.0. ECG signals were recorded after 15 minutes of supine rest with controlled breathing at 15 cycles/min. Signal acquisition was done at 300 samples/sec. From 512 consecutive sinus beats, we calculated the average, standard deviation, maximum and minimum values and rate between the longest and shortest R-R interval (E/I). We also calculated, after computing the fast Fourier transform, the total spectrum power, low frequency component (LF, from 0.01 to 0.15 Hz), high frequency component (HF, from 0.15 to 0.50 Hz) and its ratio (LF/HF). Thereafter, we correlated these results with radionuclide ejection fraction, duration of treadmill test, Holter ventricular premature complex and localization of infarction.

The average R-R interval was 757.9 +/- 116.3 and 850.9 +/- 133.9 msec (p less than 0.05), the R-R corrected standard deviation was 15.3 +/- 6.0 and 38.2 +/- 8.5 msec (p less than 0.001) and ratio E/I was 1.13 +/- 0.06 and 1.32 +/- 0.09 (p less than 0.001) in AMI and control group, respectively. In AMI group, low frequency spectral band was very decreased (LF = 0.03 +/- 0.02 sec2) and high frequency was virtually absent (HF = 0.01 +/- 0.01 sec2) compared with control group (LF = 0.13 +/- 0.06 and HF = 0.14 +/- 0.15 sec2), p less than 0.001; ratio LF/HF was increased in AMI group. There were no significant differences between groups for normalized LF (LF%) and HF (HF%).

These results showed that spectral pattern in AMI patients had very low LF and HF power density. Decreased HRV in that group was mainly due to diminished parasympathetic influence in cardiac regulation; nevertheless ratio LF/HF was increased which represents an imbalance of sympatho-vagal activity with predominance of sympathetic tone. We found poor correlation between frequency domain indices and other risk variable; best correlation was between total spectral power and radionuclide ejection fraction (r = 0.642, p less than 0.01), which could express independent prognostic value in AMI patients risk stratification.