Comparison of linear and non-linear heart rate variability indices between preterm infants at their theoretical term age and full term newborns

Abstract

International audienceHeart rate variability (HRV) enables non-invasive evaluation of cardiac autonomic activity. Preterm infants are known to have altered HRV characteristics that remain even when reaching their term age. Little is known about non-linear HRV measures between full term and preterm babies close to their theoretical full term. In this study, we calculated sample entropy, shape-describing parameters (skewness and kurtosis) and detrended fluctuation analysis coefficients α1 and α2 from RR time series of 16 very preterm babies (<32 weeks gestational age, “PT group”) measured at their theoretical term age. The values were compared to the values of nine full-term (>37 weeks, “FT group”) infants. Compared to the FT group, smaller values of sample entropy and lower values of α1 were found in the PT group. No difference in α2, kurtosis, or skewness was found. This indicates decrease in overall complexity of HR dynamics in the PT group. When various HRV indices, that included also non-linear indices, were projected to the principal component analysis space obtained from the FT group, a good separation between the PT and FT groups was found. The study was limited by a small sample but the results were in line with literature. The combinations of several HRV parameters can be of interest for future studies on the degree of ANS maturity. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

Evaluation of Maturation in Preterm Infants Through an Ensemble Machine Learning Algorithm Using Physiological Signals

“…However, another interesting observation was that EP and VP infants presented more deviation in their FMA when compared to their PMA. This might be explained by the fact that, as mentioned before, there are differences in the HRV of preterm infants at term equivalent age and that of infants born at term ( [23], [24]). This explanation is supported by the fact that, for both the EP and the VP groups, the observations with the biggest difference between the PMA and the FMA occur for PMAs that are closer to term equivalent age.…”

“…Furthermore, significant differences have been found in the HRV of premature infants with different degrees of prematurity ( [19], [20]), with HRV measurements approaching normal values with increased gestational age (GA) [21]. Although the HRV parameters show an improvement with chronological age ( [20], [22]), these differences in HRV continue to prevail even when the postmesntrual age (PMA) of the preterm infants reaches term equivalent age ( [23], [24]), and for months afterwards [25]. While normative data for the HRV of full-term neonates has been proposed ( [2], [3]), this is not the case for preterm newborns.…”

The Digi-NewB project for preterm infant sepsis risk and maturity analysis

“…The video analysis algorithm detecting the presence of personnel or relatives reached 96.8% of sensitivity and 95.1% of specificity [6]. Another infant maturity related study could identify seven heart rate variability parameters which are different in preterm and full-term infants with a P value less than 0.01 [8].…”

Classification and feature extraction for neonatal sepsis detection

“…These features are used in a commercialized sepsis prediction algorithm named HeRO (Heart Rate Observation) [14]. Motion and respiration related time domain features in [15] and Fourier domain features in [16], [17] have also been shown useful for NSD. A feature extraction method which does not depend on a time window length parameter has been proposed in [18] and uses hidden Markov models (HMM) to detect clinical events relevant for sepsis prediction.…”