Heart Rate Variability: A Novel Modality for Diagnosing Neuropathic Pain after Spinal Cord Injury

This study explores if heart rate variability (HRV) can be used to diagnose neuropathic pain (NP) in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). HRV reflects the balance of the autonomic nervous system. The study compared HRV measurements from able-bodied people, those with SCI only, and those with SCI and NP. Researchers analyzed ECG data collected at rest to find differences in HRV parameters. The key finding was that participants with SCI and NP had lower overall HRV compared to the other groups. This suggests HRV could be a tool for objectively measuring chronic NP in SCI patients.

• 1
  SCI+NP participants demonstrated lower overall HRV, as determined by the SDNN time domain parameter, compared to either AB (p < 0.01) or SCI-NP (p < 0.05) groups.
• 2
  AB and SCI-NP participants were statistically comparable for all HRV time and frequency domain parameters.
• 3
  There were no differences in HRV parameters between T4, above vs. T5, below SCI groups (for all parameters: p > 0.15) or between C8, above vs. T1, below SCI groups (p > 0.30).