Developing an Improved Measure of Chemosensitivity for the Study of Periodic Breathing in Heart Failure: the Cyclocapnic Method

We will apply a new method for the measurement of chemosensitivity (how sensitive a person is to changes in carbon dioxide), which is one of the principle determinants of whether people with heart failure develop abnormal breathing patterns We have shown in a pilot study that administering sinusoidal patterns of inspired carbon dioxide produces similar sinusoidal responses in ventilation. We aim to test our method for measuring chemosensitivity, which uses sinusoidal carbon dioxide stimuli (similar to those that drive the oscillations in ventilation found in periodic breathing). We aim to show that how the cycle time of carbon dioxide administered affects the resulting ventilatory oscillations and therefore that when measuring the chemoreflex clinically, it is important to deliver carbon dioxide stimuli that replicate the cycle time of oscillations in carbon dioxide seen in periodic breathing (typically approximately one minute).