Author(s)

Itai Goldfarb¹, David M. Steinberg², Kobi Serr³, Shlomo Segev³, Yariv Gerber¹, Joseph Shemesh³, Mickey Scheinowitz^1,4*

¹School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
²Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
³Institutes for Medical Screening & Cardiac Rehabilitation, Sheba Medical Center, Ramat Gan, Israel.
⁴Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Objective: To examine the reproducibility of HRR in healthy individuals with slow HRR response undergoing routine annual checkups. Method: HRR data (>18 b/min; Group 1 and <> 18 b/min; Group 2) were analyzed using a fixed-effects regression model adjusted for age and gender, including random effects group-specific slopes on age. Results: One hundred and thirteen individuals (56.5 ± 9.2 y), underwent 573 cumulative ESTs with an average of 5.1 ± 1.6 tests per individual during a 21-year retrospective follow-up. No differences were found in anthropometric measurements and blood variables. All individuals achieved 94% ± 7.7% of age-predicted HR max at peak EST. Group 2 demonstrated 38% of inconsistent HRR. Regression analysis demonstrated a decrease of 0.5 b/min, on average across individuals, in HRR per each extra year of age. The random effects showed an inter-subject SD level of 9.91 b/min and an SD on the age slope of 0.40 b/min/year. Conclusion: HRR showed low reproducibility in nearly 40% of tests, which was not reflected by the variation of HR nor in the slope of age during a 21-year retrospective follow-up.

Retrospective Analysis, Exercise Stress Test, Healthy Individuals, Fluctuated Heart Rate Recovery

Goldfarb, I. , Steinberg, D. , Serr, K. , Segev, S. , Gerber, Y. , Shemesh, J. and Scheinowitz, M. (2022) Reproducibility of Heart Rate Recovery in Individuals with Low Heart Rate Recovery Response. World Journal of Cardiovascular Diseases, 12, 277-285. doi: 10.4236/wjcd.2022.125027.