Sympatho-vagal correlates of transient ischemia in ambulatory patients

The authors test the hypothesis that isolated-episode temporal patterns of ST changes result from sporadic physical activity and increased oxygen demand, and that salvo patterns are due to vascular/endothelial factors in the context of coronary vasoconstrictions or vasospasms. The authors used an adaptive autoregressive method to study frequency-domain sympatho-vagal correlates of neuro-autonomic control during transient ischemia for two very different groups of records in the European Society of Cardiology ST-T database: a group of records containing isolated ST episodes, and a group of records containing salves of ST episodes. It is concluded that increased sympathetic tone precedes isolated but not salvo-type ischemic episodes, and may be associated with triggering events.