Impact of Sleep-Disordered Breathing on Heart Rate Turbulence in Heart Failure Patients

BACKGROUND: Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is associated with adverse outcomes in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). Additionally, heart rate turbulence (HRT) reflects changes in the sinus cycle length of baroreceptor in response to hemodynamic fluctuations after ventricular premature beat. Recent studies have suggested that HRT as a marker of vagal activity has a predictive value of poor prognosis in CHF patients. However, little is known about the relationship between SDB and HRT in CHF patients. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study, 75 patients with CHF were enrolled. We simultaneously performed Holter ECG during a 24-hr period and portable sleep monitoring at nighttime, and determined the respiratory disturbance index (RDI), HRT (turbulence onset (TO) and turbulence slope (TS)) during that 24-hr period. These patients were divided into two groups based on the presence of severe SDB: Group A (RDI≥30, n = 17) and Group B (RDI<30, n = 58). TS was significantly lower in Group A than in Group B across the 24-hr period (nighttime: 3.6±1.1 vs. 6.9±1.3; daytime: 3.7±0.8 vs. 7.0±1.1; all-day: 3.5±0.7 vs. 6.7±0.9% ms/RR, P<0.05, respectively). TO did not differ between the two groups. Furthermore, there was a significant negative correlation between all-day TS and RDI (R = -0.257, P = 0.027). Moreover, in the multiple regression analysis, RDI was an independent factor to determine all-day TS. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with severe SDB, blunted TS was observed across 24 hours. These results suggest that SDB induce impairment of vagal activity across a 24-hour period and may be associated with poor prognosis in CHF patients.