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Heart Rate Variability in the Diagnostics and CPAP Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea

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Advances in Biomedicine

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((CLEXBI,volume 1176))

Abstract

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common manifestation of sleep-related breathing disorders that are often accompanied by dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. The main objective of the study was to assess the usefulness of heart rate variability (HRV) analysis in the diagnosis of patients with severe OSA and in the assessment of the effects of 3-month treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). There were 54 patients enrolled in the study. The OSA group consisted of 39 patients suffering from severe OSA (apnea/hypopnea index >30/h), and the control group included 15 non-OSA patients with matched demographic characteristics and comorbidities. All patients underwent 24-h Holter electrocardiographic monitoring. HRV was analyzed using the time- and frequency-domains. We found that OSA patients had decreases in time-domains and increases in frequency-domains of HRV, compared to non-OSA controls, which strongly suggested a clinically disadvantageous shift in the balance of parasympathetic/sympathetic activity toward the latter. Further, CPAP treatment, partly, albeit significantly, reversed the OSA-induced changes in HRV. We conclude that HRV analysis may be of help in the diagnosis of OSA and in the monitoring of the effectiveness of treatment.

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Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.

Ethical Approval

The project was approved by the Bioethics Committee of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland (permit KBET/115/B/2010). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pneumology, II Chair of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Cracow, Poland

    Paweł Nastałek, Grażyna Bochenek, Aleksander Kania, Natalia Celejewska-Wójcik & Krzysztof Sładek

  2. Center for Evidence Based Medicine, II Chair of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Cracow, Poland

    Filip Mejza

Authors
  1. Paweł Nastałek
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  2. Grażyna Bochenek
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  3. Aleksander Kania
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  4. Natalia Celejewska-Wójcik
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  5. Filip Mejza
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  6. Krzysztof Sładek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paweł Nastałek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Opole Medical School, Opole, Poland

    Mieczyslaw Pokorski

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Nastałek, P., Bochenek, G., Kania, A., Celejewska-Wójcik, N., Mejza, F., Sładek, K. (2019). Heart Rate Variability in the Diagnostics and CPAP Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. In: Pokorski, M. (eds) Advances in Biomedicine. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology(), vol 1176. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/5584_2019_385

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