Association Between Resting Heart Rate And Coronary Artery Disease, Stroke, Sudden Death And Noncardiovascular Diseases: A Meta-Analysis

Limitation and Implications

This study suffered some limitations first a meta-analysis method was used to synthesize different results found among several studies.

2nd night-time heart rate has better prognostic value than resting heart rate in a population with no apparent heart diseases and in people with hypertension.

In addition, some studies did not exclude participants with prevalent cardiovascular diseases and noncardiovascular diseases.

As such, we were not studying the incidence of disease.

However, we obtained similar cardiovascular-specific results after excluding participants with cardiovascular diseases

Because of the small sample size, no association with heart failure was found in the sensitivity analysis.

In addition, a positive association was detected in 2 studies that did not meet the criteria for the inclusion in this meta-analysis.

Conclusion

Resting heart rate was an independent predictor of coronary artery disease, stroke, sudden death and noncardiovascular diseases over all the studies combined.

When the analysis included only studies concerning general populations, resting heart rate was not associated with sudden death.

Further studies are fair to confirm the findings in patients with hypertension or diabetes (because of the importance of reducing heart rate in these patients) and to explore the association between resting heart rate and sudden death,

Measuring resting heart rate is worth considering in risk prediction algorithms for coronary artery disease and cancer.

Although there were no trials available focusing on the effect of heart rate reduction on outcomes in the general population, our results indicate the need to consider such a trial.