Values of heart rate at rest in children and adults living at different altitudes in the Andes

INTRODUCTION: The heart rate (HR) is useful for the monitoring of patients, but almost no studies have been found which describe their variations according to different geographic locales and altitudes using centiles in children and adults. METHODOLOGY: Descriptive, cross-sectional study of secondary data. Measurements were taken with a calibrated pulse oximeter; our participants resided in host cities for more than 2 months and underwent clinical evaluations by physicians. The results were categorized according to their age group and the altitude of residence using centile charts. RESULTS: Our sample size consisted of 6,289 subjects across different villages in Peru. Using Pearson correlation between HR and altitude, it was found in the group of patients aged 1–5 years, a coefficient of -0.118 (p value = 0.012), in the group of patients aged 6–17, 0.047 (p value = 0.025), in the group of patients aged 18–50, -0.044 (p value = 0.041) and for the group of patients aged 51–80, 0.042 (p value = 0.256). In the groups of 1–5, 6–17 and 18–50 years of age, the variations were negligible but statistically significant due to our large sample size. When all of the data was evaluated, HR values were also found to have negligible variations according to the residence altitude, with a Pearson coefficient of -0.033 (p value = 0.009). Centiles charts were used to describe the distribution of HR for different age groups by altitude of residence. CONCLUSION: There are minimal variations of the HR according to the altitude of residence in all age groups.