Abstract

Background: Hypertension is the most prevalent noncommunicable disease. It is a multisystem disorder that affects many organs of the body including cardiovascular system, and it markedly increases both morbidity and mortality in the population. Hypertension causes dysfunction of the cardiac autonomic nervous system leading to sympathovagal imbalance. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a non-invasive tool used to detect variation in RR intervals and has been proposed as early markers of vulnerability to ventricular arrhythmias. The present study was taken up to measure the effect of duration of the hypertension on HRV for early detection and early management of cardiac abnormalities. Aims and Objectives: The objectives of the study were to evaluate the effect of duration of the hypertension on cardiac autonomic function in patients with primary hypertension by measuring HRV.
Materials and Methods: HRV test was performed on 50 male hypertensive patients who were divided into 2 groups, based on the duration of hypertension, i.e., duration of hypertension >5 years and 5 years duration (P < 0.01). Time domain parameters such as root mean square successive differences, triangular interpolation of normal to normal, and percentage of differences between adjacent normal RR interval 50% were reduced in hypertensive subjects with duration >5 years, and it was highly significant. P < 0.001 showing decreased in parasympathetic activity in long-standing hypertension. Conclusion: Study showed reduced HRV parameters showing decreased parasympathetic activity in long-standing hypertension leading to an imbalance in cardiac autonomic function. It is very much important to evaluate the cardiac autonomic function status in long-standing hypertension using simple non-invasive tools for early detection and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias and other variations in cardiac function status