Heart Rate Variability and T Wave Alternans as risk stratification indices for detecting Sudden Cardiac Death: A Review

Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) is considered one of the main causes of mortality worldwide. Often, the symptomsappear in healthy persons one hour before the fatal event. The incomprehensible nature of this cardiac disease increases the necessity to develop new methods to predict this pathology. A review of state of the art based on Kitchenham procedures is carried out. According to the literature review, several methods to predict SCD have been developed using Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and T-wave alternans (TWA). These indexes have been considered important, non-invasive, and promising indicators to stratify the risk of SCD. In this context, the work presented in this paper shows a review of the state of the art, focused on the research efforts about risk stratification indices based on HRV and TWA. The purpose of this review is developing a future research framework to stratify the risk of SCD disease, by mixing caracteristics of the HRV and TWA approaches, thus producing a new hybrid method.