Heart Rate Turbulence: a Review

Heart rate turbulence (HRT) is a recently coined phrase that describes the short term fluctuation in sinus cycle length that follows a ventricular premature complex (VPC). Its proven clinical significance lies in its ability to predict mortality and sudden cardiac death following myocardial infarction, although small studies suggest that it is also applicable to many other cardiac diseases. This review will attempt to summarize the literature to date, and to speculate on possible mechanisms. Because HRT is a new field, there are only a handful of full length papers on it. In order to present the full breadth of the research being carried out, the information provided here is based on conference abstracts as well as peer reviewed articles, and readers should keep this in mind. Most of the literature cited here, and downloadable HRT calculation programs (in C++) are available on the website www.h-r-t.org