Relation between respiratory rate and heart rate – A comparative study

Background: Activity of many physiological subsystems has a well-developed rhythmic character. Often a dependency between physiological rhythms is established due to interaction between corresponding sub-systems. A well-known feature of oscillatory systems and biological oscillators in particular, is their ability to synchronize. The cardiac and respiratory systems each function is an oscillatory manner, providing a nice example of coupled biological oscillators. The present study has been conducted to evaluate the relation between Respiratory rate and Heart rate and comment upon frequency coupling involved in cardiovascular and Respiratory systems. Materials and Methods: 40 conscious healthy adults belonging to both sexes were screened using standardized digital physiograph. Piezoelectric respiratory belt was used for respiratory recording. A bipolar limb lead ECG was used for cardiac activity. Results: The data of healthy subjects showed strong variability in heart rate and respiratory rate in a 15 minute recorded segment and subjected to fast Fourier Transforms. Conclusion: We thereby conclude that frequency coupling is the important aspect of cardio-respiratory interaction as we detected the presence of several different n: m epochs within one record. Keywords: Coupled biological oscillators, heart rate, respiratory rate, cardio-respiratoryt interaction, physiography, frequency coupling