Thailand. Prognostic Value of Heart Rate in Cardiovascular Disease

Those animals that live longer tend to have slower heart rates (HR). Several plausible theories suggest that this may not be a chance association but that the slower heart rate may have a causal relation-ship to longer life. Accordingly, a large number of cohort studies in the past years have tried to establish whether HR measurement may portend significant prognostic implications in apparently healthy subjects or even in cardiac patients. Heart rate in apparently healthy subjects Several studies have shown that increasing HR is predictive of clinical events in asymptomatic subjects(1-5). When followed from 4 to 17 years, associa-tions between HR and risk of ischemic heart disease and of cardiac and noncardiac death were confirmed(1-4)