Comparison of different strategies to assess cardiac baroreflex sensitivity based on transfer function technique in patients undergoing general anesthesia

Baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) can be noninvasively assessed from heart period (HP) and arterial pressure (AP) variability series via the estimation of the gain of the transfer function (TF) in the low frequency (LF, 0.04-0.15 Hz) band. However, different strategies can be adopted to pick the value of the TF gain and different fiducial AP values can be considered. In this study we compared different strategies to reduce the TF gain into a unique maker: i) sampling the TF gain in correspondence of the maximum of the HP-AP squared coherence; ii) sampling the TF gain at the weighted average of the central frequencies of AP spectral components; iii) calculating the average of the TF gain in the LF band. Indexes were computed using alternatively systolic AP (SAP) or diastolic AP (DAP) series in combination with HP. Results were obtained in 129 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery before (PRE) and after (POST) the induction of general anesthesia with propofol and remifentanil. The reduction of BRS during general anesthesia is expected as a result of overall depression of the cardiovascular control even in this group of pathological subjects already featuring a low BRS before general anesthesia induction. We found that the expected decrease of BRS was observed regardless of the strategy using DAP. Moreover, regardless of series (i.e., SAP or DAP), the sampling of TF gain at the weighted average of the central frequencies of the AP spectral components has the greatest statistical power in distinguishing the two experimental conditions. We recommend the use of this strategy in assessing BRS via TF analysis and a more frequent exploitation of the DAP series.