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Heart Rate Variability

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Monitoring Technologies in Acute Care Environments

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) is frequently perceived by clinicians as an esoteric research tool, whose results are expressed in nonintuitive units, with no clear clinical relevance. In this chapter, we show that HRV analysis is feasible in the acute care environment. Acceptance of online monitoring by clinicians may be improved by using more intuitive expression of results, including graphical expression via tachograms. HRV provides useful information on autonomic nervous system regulation of cardiac activity, as shown in various conditions such as hemorrhage, sepsis, and brain injury. Using repeated short-term (<5 min) HRV analysis, information relevant to early prediction of prognosis, patient management, evaluation of disease severity and evolution, as well as response to treatment may be obtained in the acute care environment. It remains, however, to improve the applicability of these techniques to a particular treated patient.

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Conflict of Interest

Drs. Tavernier and Jeanne are inventors and the University Hospital of Lille (France) is proprietary in the following patent: “Method for processing a series of cardiac rhythm signals (RR) and the use thereof for analyzing cardiac rhythm variability, in particular for assessing a patient’s pain or stress”. PCT/FR2005/002056. Dr. Jeanne is a scientific adviser to MetroDoloris (Lille, France) and owns shares of MetroDoloris.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospital of Lille, Rue du Pr Emile Laine, Lille, 59037, France

    Benoît Tavernier MD, PhD & Mathieu Jeanne MD, PhD

Authors
  1. Benoît Tavernier MD, PhD
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  2. Mathieu Jeanne MD, PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benoît Tavernier MD, PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Anesthesiology, Surgery, and Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  2. Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Maxime Cannesson

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Tavernier, B., Jeanne, M. (2014). Heart Rate Variability. In: Ehrenfeld, J., Cannesson, M. (eds) Monitoring Technologies in Acute Care Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8557-5_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8557-5_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8556-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8557-5

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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