Reliability of carotid-femoral arterial waveforms for the derivation of ultra-short term heart rate variability in injured British servicemen: An inter-rater reliability study

In this study, the comparative precision of carotid versus femoral arterial waveforms to measure ultra-short term heart rate variability (HRV(UST)) following traumatic injury was investigated for the first time. This was an inter-rater reliability study of 50 British servicemen (aged 23–44 years) with non-acute combat-related traumatic injury (CRTI). Paired continuous arterial waveform data for HRV(UST) analysis, were simultaneously sampled at the carotid and femoral arterial sites (14–16 seconds) during pulse wave velocity (PWV) measurement. HRV(UST) was reported as the root mean square of the successive differences (RMSSD). Following the determination of the superior sampling site (carotid versus femoral), the blinded inter-rater agreement in RMSSD for the preferred site was quantified using the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and the Bland-Altman plot. The mean age of participants was 34.06±4.88 years. The femoral site was superior to the carotid site with a significantly higher number of reliable signals obtained (Fisher’s Exact test; p<0.001). The inter-rater agreement in femoral-derived RMSSD was excellent [ICC 0.99 (95%CI: 0.994–0.997)] with a moderate level of agreement (mean difference [bias]: 0.55; 95% CI: -0.13–1.24 ms). In this study, we demonstrated that the femoral artery is a more reliable site than the carotid artery for HRV(UST) measurement and post-trauma risk stratification following CRTI.