HRV complexity as a diagnostic tool for late onset sepsis in sick premature infants

In this paper, the objective was to investigate the heart rate variability in two selected groups of premature infants (sepsis vs non-sepsis). We studied the RR interval series not only by linear methods - time domain and frequency domain, but also by non-linear methods - chaos theory and information theory, in order to find the optimal parameters to distinguish sepsis premature infants from non-sepsis ones. The results show that indexes of information theory are useful parameters for the diagnosis of late neonatal infection in premature infants with recurrent apnea-bradycardia.