New insights

Heart rate turbulence (HRT) is a measure of the autonomic response to perturbations of arterial blood pressure after single ventricular premature complex (VPC). This response consists of a short initial acceleration followed by a gradual deceleration of the heart rate1. One of the mechanisms proposed for the genesis of HRT is the alteration in the baroreceptor reflex elicited by the small drop of the arterial pressure due to the VPC. According to this concept, HRT can be non-invasively assessed quasi as “nature’s own autonomic perturbation experiment”2.