Treatment of atrial fibrillation with catheter ablation is a procedure in which physicians attempt to electrically isolate areas of the heart responsible for generation and maintenance of this arrhythmia. The aim of this thesis was to compare the values of heart rate variability (HRV) parameters between groups of patients who underwent radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and pulsed field ablation (PFA) for atrial fibrillation. We used short electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings obtained immediately after the procedure, while the patients were still under the influence of anesthesia. The signals were appropriately processed and prepared for HRV analysis. For the analysis, we extracted RR intervals from the ECG signal, which represent the distances between successive R peaks. Detection was performed using the Pan-Tompkins algorithm, based on the amplitude and slope analysis of the signal. Irregular RR intervals were corrected using spline interpolation. We calculated various time-domain (meanRR, SDNN, rMSSD, pNN50) and frequency-domain HRV parameters (VLF, LF, HF, LF/HF). Our results were compared to reference values obtained using the Kubios software.
We then compared the results between the RFA and PFA groups. No statistically significant differences were observed, although some parameters showed trends consistent with findings from larger studies investigating HRV changes at much later stages after therapy. The analysis highlights the need for further research based on longer and more stable recordings with a larger number of patients.
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