RESEARCH ARTICLE
Autonomic Dysfunction and Risk Stratification Assessed from Heart Rate Pattern
A Günther*, O.W Witte, D Hoyer
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 39
Last Page: 49
Publisher ID: TONEUJ-4-39
DOI: 10.2174/1874205X01004010039
Article History:
Received Date: 11/5/2009Revision Received Date: 22/12/2009
Acceptance Date: 4/2/2010
Electronic publication date: 15/6/2010
Collection year: 2010

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
The modulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) under physiological and pathophysiological conditions is in focus of recent research. Many patients with cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases display features of sympathovagal dysregulation. Measuring specific ANS parameters could improve risk stratification. Thus, the early diagnosis of ANS dysfunction in these patients poses a great challenge with high prognostic relevance.
The most relevant methods and measures of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis and HRV monitoring will be described in detail in this chapter. The grown importance of these easily obtainable heart rate patterns in stratifying the risk of patients with myocardial infarction and heart failure as well as ischemic stroke will be demonstrated based on recent clinical studies. In order to perspectively improve clinical management of these patients further large scale clinical investigations on the role of ANS dysfunction will be useful.