Assessment of Parasympathetic Control of Blood Vessel by Pulsation Spectrum and Comparison With Spectral Method of Rr Intervals

A new pulse spectrum method of assessing autonomic function was examined in a pharmacological experiment on eight healthy volunteers. The pulse pressure data is obtained under control condition and in parasympathetic blocked by atropine. Compared with the spectral method of heart rate variability (HRV), which is wide-spreading in laboratory studies and clinical diagnosis nowadays, the method of pulsation spectrum provides a new and direct view to assess parasympathetic control. As can be seen from the results, the high frequency of pulsation harmonics are reduced by the parasympathetic blocked, and on the contrary, low frequency component increased. By the analysis of linear regression, the pulsation spectrum method indicates more correlations with atropine doses. We anticipate that the non-invasive assessment of short-term autonomic function will come to be performed more reliably and conveniently by using this method.