Informational and Statistical Analysis of Heart Rate Variability in the Assessment of the Human Vegetative Nervous System Functional State

The aim of the investigation is to study the potential of the informational and statistical method in the analysis of heart rate variability in assessing functional state of the vegetative nervous system, and to develop criteria for evaluating the degree of self-organization of the processes controlling cardiac activity and tone state.

Materials and Methods. The investigation included 156 people of both genders, which were divided into three groups. Group 1 (n=60) comprised practically healthy individuals aged 18–23 years, group 2 (n=38) included practically healthy individuals aged 32–60 years, and group 3 (n=58) consisted of patients with the diagnosis of “acute cerebral circulatory disorder, stroke”. Electrocardiograms recording with the following plotting of cardiointervalograms and their analysis were performed using electrocardiograph Poli-Spectrum-8 (Neurosoft, Russia), programs Poli-Spectrum and Poli-Spectrum-Rhythm, as well as programs especially developed by the authors for computation of Dirichlet distribution parameters.

Results. For practically healthy people the state of regulatory systems with the dominance of self-organization processes and parasympathetic nervous system tone prevailed. Self-organization coefficient S equal to one is a sort of a boundary between a normal state of the human organism regulatory systems and conditions caused by insufficiency or inadequacy of the adaptive systems, for which its value becomes less than one. While a self-organization coefficient evaluates a general state of the human adaptive regulatory systems, a coefficient of the tone state determines the character of cardiovascular system functioning. Regulatory systems having the values of self-organization coefficient and tone coefficient below one may be considered to be in a critical state.

Conclusion. Informational and statistical approach to the analysis of heart rate variability allows a more precise evaluation of the functional regulatory systems condition in comparison with the traditional methods of heart rate variability analysis.

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Ilyakhinskiy A.V., Pakhomov P.A., Anufriev M.A., Levanov V.M., Mukhina I.V. Informational and Statistical Analysis of Heart Rate Variability in the Assessment of the Human Vegetative Nervous System Functional State. Sovremennye tehnologii v medicine 2015; 7(3): 67, https://doi.org/10.17691/stm2015.7.3.09