Short-term heart-rate variability in healthy small and medium-sized dogs over a five-minute measuring period
Published Online: Feb 14, 2020
Page range: 161 - 167
Received: May 20, 2019
Accepted: Feb 03, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jvetres-2020-0013
Keywords
© 2020 R.A. Baisan et al. published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Introduction
Five-minute heart-rate variability (HRV) measurement is a useful tool for assessing the autonomic nervous system (ANS) balance in humans, but there are no studies on healthy dogs. The aim of the study was, therefore, to provide the reference ranges in small and medium-sized breeds for short-term HRV time and frequency domain (TFD) analyses.
Material and Methods
A total of 79 healthy dogs were included in the study between 2015 and 2019. Grouping by age with the breakpoint at six years and subgrouping by reproductive status and sex was imposed. All the dogs were included after physical and cardiological examinations and blood analyses. The TFD of HRV were analysed from a five-minute-long digital ECG recording after removal of non-sinus complexes.
Results
There were no statistically significant differences in any TFD parameters between age, reproductive status or sex groups. A mild increase in all time domain parameters and the high-frequency (HF) band was observed in older dogs, and the low frequency (LF):HF ratio decreased in these dogs. In males, the time domain parameters and HF band increased slightly.
Conclusion
The normal ranges for HRV derived from short-term ECG recording in the usual clinical environment now have proposed reference ranges. Our findings suggest that accommodation time, age, sex, or reproductive status do not influence the results derived from these recordings, indicating that this method is reliable for assessing the ANS function in small and medium-sized dog breeds.