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A New Standard of Care
Employing Physiological Monitoring in Dentistry...
The future of healthcare lies in recognizing the dentist’s and physician’s role in discerning and improving patient physiology. Monitoring and assessment of heart rate variability (HRV) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) represent key tools to understanding the shared physiological basis for the inextricable relationship between dentistry, medicine and other healthcare practices.
The ANS, composed of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, controls the cardiovascular system, in part, by releasing neurotransmitters that increase or decrease heart rate (HR), respectively. These periodic oscillations, modulated by the activity of the ANS, are known as HRV, providing a measurement of the resultant time interval between one heartbeat and the next. A high HRV is a sign of health, depicting the body’s balance in shifting between sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways. Lowered HRV is associated with disease states, poor adaptation to stress and physiological dysfunction.
HRV is a useful method to assess cardiac autonomic modulation in patients undergoing dental procedures, because knowledge of physiological conditions provides more objective data to the professional as well as the opportunity to benefit the patient with a better treatment plan.
What is the HindexRV® and How Does It Work?
HindexRV® is a physiological monitoring system with innumerable dental and medical uses.It is the only FDA-approved device that monitors multiple physiological processes simultaneously in real time. HindexRV® monitoring includes: EKG, heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), respiration rate (RR), and muscle tension (EMG). The system’s physiological sensors, instrumentation and computer driven programs record 2048 measurements per second, nearly ten times the number of readings of other HRV monitoring devices. Unlike other products on the market, it also incorporates technology that allows clinicians to correct for artifacts.
The HindexRV® enables clinicians to more easily determine whether a procedure has been applied most effectively or if a sleep or TMD appliance adjustment is optimally balanced to the patient’s physiology. The clinician can therefore ascertain objective measurements of current physiology rather than relying solely on the subjective feedback of the patient. HindexRV® offers collaborative opportunities by recording objective data of physiological changes that support efficacy of treatment, and which allow for communication with other healthcare practitioners and researchers using a common language.