Evaluation of the Parasympathetic Tone Activity (PTA) index to assess the analgesia/nociception balance in anaesthetised dogs.

The Parasympathetic Tone Activity (PTA) is an index based on the analysis of heart rate variability that has been recently developed to assess the analgesia/nociception balance in anaesthetised animals. The present study aimed to evaluate its performance in dogs undergoing surgery. Thirty dogs admitted for elective surgeries, were anaesthetised with a standardised protocol. PTA, heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and HDR (defined as an increase by >20% in HR and/or SBP within 5min) were assessed at the following predefined time-points: TStSt (steady-state, after induction of anaesthesia and before start of surgery), TClamp (clamping of surgical drapes on the skin), TCut (cutaneous incision), TPrePTA (retrospectively assessed 1min before a PTA decline of at least 20%) and TEndIso (isoflurane discontinuation). The dynamic variation of PTA over 1min (∆PTA) was calculated at each predefined time-points and its performance to predict HDR was assessed by building Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves. A significant decrease of PTA (p<0.002) was detected 1min after TClamp, TCut and TPrePTA followed by a significant increase in HR and/or SBP within 5min after the time points (p<0.01). The ΔPTA was associated with the following performance in predicting HDR: AUC ROC [95% CI]=0.80 [0.71 to 0.88] (p<0.05), with a sensitivity of 77% and a specificity of 72% for a threshold value of -18%. Although encouraging, the performance of the PTA index and its dynamic variation needs to be further evaluated, particularly in different clinical contexts.