Acute effects of electronic cigarette smoking on heart rate variability

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to a temporal variation between consecutive heart beats and is considered a measure of the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. HRV is also one of the few methods which can evaluate the acute effects of smoking on the autonomous nervous system. The aim of our study was to evaluate and compare HRV parameters during regular cigarette and electronic cigarette smoking. The study was performed on 15 regular cigarette smokers and 15 electronic cigarette smokers, and time-domain, frequency-domain and nonlinear parameters of HRV were recorded. When smoking regular cigarettes, the subjects had lower values of HRV parameters than before smoking, whereas electronic cigarette smokers described higher HRV parameters values for all HRV parameters. Our results regarding the behavior of HRV parameters during regular cigarette smoking are consistent with the literature, but the evaluation of the sympathovagal balance during electronic cigarette smoking was performed for the first time in our study.