Reference:
Thomas RJ, Mietus JE, Peng CK, et al. An electrocardiogram-based technique to assess cardiopulmonary coupling during sleep. Sleep 2005; 28(9): 1151- 61 PMID: 16268385
Objectives:
Evaluate a new automated measure of CardioPulmonary Coupling (CPC) during sleep using a single-lead electrocardiographic (ECG) signal.
Conclusions:
A sleep spectrogram derived from information in a single lead electrocardiogram can be used to dynamically track cardiopulmonary interactions. The 2 distinct (bimodal) regimes demonstrate a closer relationship with visual cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) and non-cyclic alternating pattern (non-CAP) states than with standard sleep stages. This technique may provide a complementary approach to the conventional characterization of graded non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stages.
Practical Significance:
This seminal work establishes the link between High Frequency CPC with good sleep quality, and Low Frequency CPC with poor sleep quality.