Assessment of Cardiac Autonomic Regulation

This comment considers experimental design and data processing technologies suitable to studies investigating cardiac autonomic status and its changes.The aim of the editorial is to explain that physiologic studies of cardiac autonomic regulation, and autonomic cardiac risk stratification benefit from both different experimental protocols and distinct data processing techniques.The autonomic system plays an important role in maintaining the homeostasis of the organism.In man, the situation is complicated by the interaction between the autonomic system and psychological and psychosocial reactions.The autonomic system thus responds to a broad array of physiologic conditions and to variety of pathologies.Compared to other organs, cardiac autonomic regulation is more easily studied.This is because of the oscillatory nature of the cardiovascular physiology and the practicality of obtaining accurate beatto-beat sequences of blood pressure readings and electrocardiographic measurements.The interest in studying cardiac autonomic regulation has been further advanced by observations relating cardiac autonomic reflexes to risk stratification of cardiac patients.The two facets of studying cardiac autonomic regulation, i.e., the physiologic investigations and the cardiac risk assessment studies, have also been reflected in the development of investigative methodologies.Seminal animal and human studies linked the oscillations of cardiac periodicity to the autonomic nervous system.