Heart rate variability (HRV) can provide useful information about the autonomic nervous control of the heart and about the state and functioning of the heart. We investigated if and to what extent the HRV changes after certain treatment in pigs in experimental conditions. The signals used in this work were obtained for other purposes in another research study. We developed software tools to convert the electrocardiogram signals into auxiliary signals of the so-called RR intervals (the intervals between successive heartbeats) and calculated various HRV parameters based on these signals. We quantified HRV parameters before and after the treatment with statistical methods. Various statistical tests were used to determine statistical significance of the differences. We could not find any significant changes in HRV parameters as a result of the treatment. The pigs were under the influence of anesthesia, which is well known to greatly reduce the baseline HRV, which makes the search for potential changes in HRV parameters after an intervention very difficult.
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