Heart rate variability (HRV) has been widely investigated in a variety of clinical conditions, but few studies have assessed the changes in the heart rate with regard to different congestive heart failure (CHF) etiologies. The aim of this work was to characterize the heart rate variability of patients affected by CHF caused by dilated cardiomyopathy, ischemic heart disease or other different CHF etiologies, in comparison to that of healthy subjects. The parameters adopted for analysis were the power spectral density in the very low, low and high frequency bands, the power-law β exponent and the SD1 and SD2 index-es of the Poincaré plot. Results showed significant changes related to etiology especially in the very low and high frequency bands and in the β exponent values, thus encouraging the future development of a classifier for the discrimination of the different CHF etiologies.
