High-frequency power of heart rate variability can predict the outcome of thoracic surgical patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome on admission to the intensive care unit: a prospective, single-centric, case-controlled study.

Background: The morbidity and mortality of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains high, and the strategic focus of ARDS research has shifted toward identifying patients at high risk of mortality early in the course of illness. This study intended to identify the heart rate variability (HRV) measure that can predict the outcome of patients with ARDS on admission to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU).

Methods: Patients who had lung or esophageal cancer surgery were included either in the ARDS group (n = 21) if they developed ARDS after surgery or in the control group (n = 11) if they did not. The ARDS patients were further stratified into survivors and non-survivors subgroups according to their outcomes. HRV measures of the patients were used for statistical analysis.

Results: The mean RR interval (mRRI), high-frequency power (HFP) and product of low-/high-frequency power ratio tidal volume and tidal volume (LHR*V) were significantly lower (p < 0.05), while the normalized HFP to V ratio (nHFP/V) was significantly higher in the ARDS patients (p = 0.011). The total power (TP), low-frequency power (LFP), HFP and HFP/V were all significantly higher in the non-survived ARDS patients, whereas Richmond Agitation-Sedation Scale (RASS) was significantly lower in the non-survived ARDS patients. After adjustment for RASS, age and gender, firth logistic regression analysis identified the HFP, TP as the significant independent predictors of mortality for ARDS patients.

Conclusions: The vagal modulation of thoracic surgical patients with ARDS was enhanced as compared to that of non-ARDS patients, and the non-survived ARDS patients had higher vagal activity than those of survived ARDS patients. The vagal modulation-related parameters such as TP and HFP were independent predictors of mortality in patients with ARDS on admission to the SICU, and the HFP was found to be the best predictor of mortality for those ARDS patients. Increased vagal modulation might be an indicator for poor prognosis in critically ill patients following thoracic surgery.