AJP - Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Vol 266, Issue 4 1565-H1571, Copyright © 1994 by American Physiological Society

ARTICLES

Heart rate and heart rate variability as indexes of sympathovagal balance

M. Bootsma, C. A. Swenne, H. H. Van Bolhuis, P. C. Chang, V. M. Cats and A. V. Bruschke
Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Hospital, The Netherlands.

According to the Rosenblueth-Simeone model, the heart rate (HR) is proportional to the sympathovagal balance. The individual proportionality constant is the intrinsic heart rate, which can only be determined invasively. The normalized low-frequency heart rate variability power (LF) has been raised as a calibrated noninvasive alternative. To concrete this assumption, we studied the individual LF-HR relation during incremental head-up tilt (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, and 80 degrees) in 21 young, healthy males. HR (means +/- SD) increased from 61.0 +/- 9.1 beats/min at 0 degree to 85.9 +/- 18.3 beats/min at 80 degrees. LF increased from 45.8 +/- 16.7 nu at 0 degrees to 79.8 +/- 13.8 nu at 80 degrees (nu meaning normalized units). Individual regressions of LF on HR yielded correlation coefficients of 0.80 +/- 0.13 (means +/- SD). The demonstrated linear relation between LF and HR confirms the potential significance of heart rate variability as a noninvasive means of assessing the sympathovagal balance.

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