National News

ISLAMABAD, (APP): Minor irregularities in the heartbeat are
indicative of a healthy body, a study says.
According to researchers full breathing cycle was correlated to the
heart rate, the team now focused on exhaling and specifically on the moment
when the heart rate would normally be reduced again,reported Health news.
“With our approach, you might say we are surgically selecting the moment
when the decisive events take place,” one of the researchers, Georg Schmidt,
said.
“Our method produces a far more specific picture of the functional
condition of the body,” said Daniel Sinnecker, primary author of the study.
Breathing cycles and heart beat rhythms of close on 950 heart attack
patients were measured shortly after a heart attack.
The data was analysed to find respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which may be
translated as a “breathing-induced irregularity in the sinus node, the bundle
of nerve fibers controlling the heart beat”. The test persons were re-examined
every six months over a five-year period.
They found that heart attack patients with less pronounced arrhythmia
had a higher risk of dying within the period of observation. Examined persons
with only minor arrhythmia were five times more at risk of dying over the
five-year period than people with higher breathing-related fluctuations.
The researchers are confident that the new method may soon be widely
applied in medical practice.
“We are quite close to everyday application since, by and large, the
development of the method is complete,” Schmidt said.
The technical hurdles are few since it is no longer necessary these days
to measure breathing rate in addition to heart beat, a modern ECG unit would
basically suffice, the researchers explained.
“Even the general practitioner could therefore within ten minutes record
sinus arrhythmic activity,” Schmidt said.
The method may be fruitfully applied in more than 80 percent of the
cases, Schmidt noted. Irrespective whether the examined patients had recently
suffered a heart attack, it could be used in combination with other indicators
to assess the health risk, the researchers said.