Nonlinear analysis of cardiac rhythm fluctuations using DFA method

An approach by which the detrented fluctuation analysis (DFA) method can be used to help diagnose heart failure was demonstrated. DFA was applied to patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF) to check correlations between DFA indices and CHF, and determine a correlation between DFA indices and mortality, with a particular attention to the residue parameter, which is a measure of the departure of the DFA from its power law approximation. DFA parameters proved to be useful as a complement to the physiological parameters weber and FE to sort out the patients into three prognostic group.