Detection and screening of sleep apnea using spectral and time domain analysis of heart rate variability

Sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) is one of the most common breathing related sleep disorder. Sleep apnea (SA) may be of particular concern in chronic heart failure patients due to its high levels of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The aim of this work was to assess the diagnostic potential of SA using spectral analysis of nocturnal heart rate, and to introduce new simple time domain heart rate variability (HRV) measures for screening SA. Data subjects supplied by the Physionet database [1] were analyzed. The preliminary results established the effectiveness of the spectral algorithm as a potential detection tool for SA with p<0.0001, and demonstrated the usefulness of the new proposed time domain parameters.