A Study of Heart Rate Recovery Following Exercise in Subjects with Normal Pulmonary Function Test

Exercise is a common physiological stress which has positive chronotropic effect on heart rate and on cessation heart rate returns to pre-exercise level. A delay in heart rate recovery (HRR) (12beats in first minute) is considered abnormal and reflects autonomic dysfunction.Pulmonary function tests (PFT) are good indicator of autonomic function.Few studies are available on abnormal HRR (heart rate recovery) in COPDCases. Hence the present study was taken up to find out the presence of abnormal HRR in subjects with normal PFT and to establish HRR as an independent autonomic marker. For the study 150 healthy young adults (both male and female) with normal PFT were subjected to exercise by Bicycle ergometer till targeted Heart Rate (85%Maximum Heart Rate(MHR)) was achieved. HRR at the end of 1 minute followingcessation of exercise were tabulated. In our study 29 subjects (19.33%) with normal PFT show Abnormal HRR indicating HRR could be an independent autonomic marker.