Heart rate control in chronic heart failure: Resting versus mean heart rate with prolonged ambulatory ECG recording

Abstract

Although heart rate (HR) must be considered as a continuous variable in terms of prognosis in heart failure (HF), a threshold for increased risk appears to exist among those patients above 70 beats per minute (bpm) [1]. As effective HR control is an increasingly important goal of HF treatment, confident knowledge of pulse rate during treatment is relevant. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to compare resting HR measurement with averaged values obtained with prolonged ambulatory electrocardiography recording.