Key result
Two patients with cervical spinal cord trauma and transient bradycardia demonstrated a transient increase of parasympathetic vagal tone on power spectral analysis of heart rate variability.
Case Report (n=2)
Power spectral analysis of heart rate variability can demonstrate transient increases in parasympathetic vagal tone in patients with cervical spinal cord trauma and bradycardia.
May inform vagal mechanisms in cervical SCI bradycardia; hypothesis-generating and should not change practice.
Transient imbalance of the cardiac autonomic nervous system is common in the acute period after cervical spinal cord injury.Loss of sympathetic nervous tone causes hypotension, while bradycardia may occur because of an unopposed increase of vagal tone.In extreme cases, this imbalance may lead to cardiac arrest.1.~In addition, quadriplegic patients with stable haemodynamics have been shown to have interrupted sympathetic outflow with increased vagal activity.3 We investigated two patients with cervical spinal cord trauma followed by transient bradycardia, which improved over several days.We demonstrated a transient increase of parasympathetic vagal tone in these patients using power spectral analysis of heart rate variability.
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Kawamoto et al. (1993) conducted a case report in Cervical spinal cord trauma with transient bradycardia (n=2). Cervical spinal cord trauma was evaluated on Parasympathetic vagal tone assessed by power spectral analysis of heart rate variability. Two patients with cervical spinal cord trauma and transient bradycardia demonstrated a transient increase of parasympathetic vagal tone on power spectral analysis of heart rate variability.
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