Heart Rate Variability Reproducibility and Stability Using Commercially Available Equipment in Coronary Artery Disease With Daily Life Myocardial Ischemia

Heart rate variability (HRV) appears to be a strong predictor of death. The reproducibility of HRV measurements in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD) who have daily life myocardial ischemia, however, is unknown. Thirty patients with stable CAD (25 men and 5 women; aged 62 ± 8 years) with daily life ischemia were studied with 2 consecutive 24-hour Holter monitoring recordings. Intra- and interobserver reproducibility of the HRV measures was high, with correlations ranging from 0.990 to 0.999 (p <0.0001). Strong correlations between time and frequency domain HRV measures were observed (range 0.912 to 0.963; p <0.0001). Both the frequency and duration of ischemia, measured by ST change, varied significantly by day for each patient (s = 155.5; p <0.0001; s = 232.5, p <0.0001, respectively). Correlations for HRV measurements between days remained high (range 0.871 to 0.983; p <0.0001), despite stratification by magnitude of daily ischemia. Thus, 24-hour HRV measurements are stable in CAD patients with daily life myocardial ischemia over a short period, despite varying magnitudes of daily ischemia. These results support the use of HRV as a clinical tool and an outcome measure in future CAD intervention studies using commercially available equipment. (Am J Cardiol 1996;78:866–870)