Postdoctoral Scholar University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Abstract: Background – Smart textiles have been developed to replace standard adhesive electrodes for collection of electrocardiograms, though limited work has assessed their potential in equine medicine. Hypothesis/Objectives – The objective of this study was to assess the validity of a smart textile ECG device for long-duration heart rate variability (HRV) assessment. Animals – Four healthy Warmblood horses. Methods – ECGs were simultaneously recorded using a smart textile device and a standard telemetric device from unrestrained horses for 6hrs in a controlled pilot study. Data were analyzed to calculate heart rate and HRV metrics [average RR intervals, the axial and perpendicular dispersions from the line of identity from the Poincaré plot (SD1 and SD2, respectively), root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD), percentage of successive RR interval differences (pNN50), and oscillations in the very-low frequency (VLF), low-frequency (LF), and high-frequency (HF) bands]. Data were compared using Bland-Altman analysis and Pearson coefficients. Results – Excellent agreement with small biases were observed between the two devices and perfect correlations (r=1.0, p< 0.0001) were found for all metrics except for VLF and HF. Bland-Altman tests revealed a mean bias of 0.003bpm (95% limits of agreement: -0.06 to 0.06) for HR, -0.05ms (-2.62 to 2.52) for RR intervals, -0.30ms (-3.60 to 3.00) and -1.10ms (-5.49 to 3.29) for SD1 and SD2, respectively, and -0.43ms (-5.09 to 4.23) for RMSSD. Conclusions and clinical importance – This study demonstrates that a smart textile device is a practical alternative for long-duration assessment of HRV in resting horses.
