Article

The current clinical practice has established guidelines to assess influences of
severity of autonomic injury on the control of heart and blood pressure following
spinal cord injury (SCI). However, the influences of SCI-induced autonomic
impairment on microvascular dysfunction have not yet been established. Heart rate
variability (HRV) has been shown to be a potential tool for quantifying residual
sympathovagal regulation of the cardiovascular system following SCI and may be
used to assess the effect of autonomic injury on skin microvascular dysfunction.
A total of 26 people were recruited into the study, including 12 people with SCI
and 14 nondisabled controls. HRV and sacral skin intervals and sacral skin
perfusion were continually recorded during 10 min upright and 10 min prone
postures. The sympathovagal balance was defined as the ratio of the power of the
low frequency to the high frequency of HRV. The results showed that postural
changes of nondisabled people produced significant changes in the sympathovagal
balance; lower sympathovagal balance was associated with higher skin perfusion (p
< 0.05). People with SCI did not show a significant change of HRV and skin
perfusion in response to postural changes. In this study, we have demonstrated
that the sympathovagal balance assessed by HRV was associated with the skin
vasoconstrictive response to postural changes.

Langue : ANGLAIS