Heart rate variability: are you using it properly? Standardisation checklist of procedures

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Physiology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Heart rate variability (HRV) is a key metric for assessing cardiac autonomic modulation.
• Established guidelines from 1996, 2015, and 2017 highlight the importance of HRV analysis in various physiological and clinical contexts.
• HRV analysis serves as a valuable complementary tool for clinical evaluation and monitoring therapeutic interventions like exercise programs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide standardized recommendations for heart rate variability data collection and analysis.
• To develop a checklist for normalization procedures in HRV methodology.
• To focus these recommendations and checklists on cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation applications.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing heart rate variability (HRV) literature and publications.
• Identification of common shortcomings in current HRV analysis methods.
• Development of recommendations and a practical checklist to mitigate these issues.

Main Results:

• The paper details common pitfalls in heart rate variability (HRV) analysis.
• It offers specific recommendations to enhance the accuracy and reliability of HRV data.
• A checklist is provided to guide users through normalization procedures.

Conclusions:

• The article presents a comprehensive set of recommendations and a checklist for HRV data collection and analysis.
• Implementing these guidelines can lead to improved reporting of clinical outcomes and intervention effectiveness.
• This work aims to advance the dissemination and understanding of heart rate variability knowledge in clinical practice.