Reproducibility of a non-invasive real-time measure of cardiac parasympathetic activity.

The NeuroScope is a new device which produces a continuous real-time index of cardiac parasympathetic activity (the CIPA) and accurately measures RR intervals. The reproducibility of the CIPA has not yet been assessed. This study was designed to assess the reproducibility of a 5 minute recording of the CIPA using the NeuroScope and compare it with that of conventional heart rate variability (HRV) measures. 50 subjects (31 male, 19 female) aged 21-77 years were recruited. 11 of these were apparently healthy and 39 were patients with a variety of cardiological problems. Two 5 minute recordings of CIPA and RR intervals for each subject were made with a 2-3 minute break between recordings. The limits of agreement for the CIPA were such that the second estimate was between 72 and 140% of the first estimate, 95% of the time. The limits of agreement for other indices of HRV, namely SDNN, rMSSD, In low-frequency HRV and In high-frequency HRV, were 61-157%, 68-153%, 77-131% and 76-133%. The short-term reproducibility of a 5 minute recording of CIPA is moderate and better than simple time-domain but not frequency-domain measures of HRV.