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Prognostic value of home heart rate for cardiovascular mortality in the general population.

Hozawa A et al.

Summary

Self-measurement of blood pressure at home is now recognized as a useful and reproducible assessment of blood pressure and heart rate values. At the time being, no study investigating whether home heart rate values predict the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and what value should be made into the reference values are available. As a result, an increase of 5 beats/min in the morning home HR measurement was associated with a 17% increase in the risk of cardiovascular mortality adjusted to home BP values. To conclude, subjects with HR > 70 beats/min had a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality, justifying that home-measured heart rate is a strong predictor of the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality independently of home-measured blood pressure values.

Am J Hypertens. 2004;17:1005-1010.

Commentary

The cardiovascular risk of high heart rate (HR) is now widely recognized. The SNS report has also paid attention to this matter (paper by Palatini et al).
In the present study, 1780 Japanese individuals, free of cardiac arrhythmias, were instructed to perform the measurement of heart rate and blood pressure (BP) at their homes. It was the aim of the study to investigate to what extent these home measurements of HR and BP could be used as predictors for elevated cardiovascular risks. The study clearly indicated that the self-measurement of HR and BP offers valid data on the degree of cardiovascular risk in each individual. Elevated HR is a risk factor which is even worsened when associated with high BP.