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. 2008 Sep:35:57-60.
doi: 10.1109/CIC.2008.4748976.

Interaction between Heart Rate Variability and Respiration in Preterm Infants

P Indic  1 , Eb Salisbury, D Paydarfar, En Brown, R Barbieri
Affiliations

Interaction between Heart Rate Variability and Respiration in Preterm Infants

P Indic et al. Comput Cardiol. 2008 Sep.

Abstract

Several studies have focused attention on cardio-respiratory function as an important indicator of development in infants. In the preterm infant, however, it remains unclear whether respiratory activity already affects heart beat variations at such an early development stage. In this work we investigate the presence of cardio-respiratory coupling in preterm infants by quantifying the interaction between heart rate variability and respiration using multivariate autoregressive analysis. We evaluated the frequency domain indices using standard methods. Results show a significantly higher coupling, as confirmed by surrogate data analysis, in the frequency range associated with regular breathing compared to other ranges. These observations indicate a mild, but present, respiratory sinus arrhythmia in preterm infants.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) RR and respiration time series from one of the 500s epochs used for the analysis and (B) the correspondent frequency domain measures. The small circles indicate the maximum coherence in each frequency range. Gains are computed at maximum coherence.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) RR and respiration time series from an infant during regular breathing (200s interval) and (B) the correspondent frequency domain measures. The small circles indicate the maximum coherence in each frequency range. Gains are computed at maximum coherence.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Total power in different frequency ranges for (A) RR and (B) respiration. (C) Coherence and (D) gain between RR and respiration. Indices are averaged for all epochs and all subjects. Bars indicate standard errors.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Example of surrogate data analysis of coherence function (blue line) with 95% percentile threshold (green line).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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