Portal hypertension is the most common and lethal complication of chronic liver disease.Liver cirrhosis being the common as a free portal vein pressure in excess of the normal by 5 to 10 mm Hg which represents an increasingmorbidity and mortality among alcoholics but our main focus of our research is on in non alcoholic portal hypertensive patients.Autonomic dysfunction occurs in those patients and is sometimes responsible for major complications, likevariceal bleeding, hepatic encephalopathy or arrhythmias. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a known marker of the autonomic imbalance.The aim of our research study was toassess the role of HRV parameters in evaluation of heart rate variability in non alcoholic portal hypertension patients. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a marker of autonomic activity and can be analyzed using time-domain and frequency-domain methods. This study was undertaken to compare the HRV in patients with non-alcoholic portal hypertension patientsand normal subjects.Heart rate variability in 30 controls (Group I) and 30 patients with portal hypertensive patients with non alcoholic etiology (Group II) aged 25-45 yrs was studied by using electrocardiographic data obtained during HRV analysis as ECG signals Conversion of the resting ECG signal was done using AD converter with sampling frequency of 1024/sec. Power spectral analysis of the converted ECG signal was done using Fast Fourier transformation.Low frequency (LF) power, High frequency (HF) power and Low frequency/ High frequency ratio (LF/HF) were analyzed using frequency-domain analysis. There was a significant difference (p <0.001) in LF power and LF/HF ratio of patients with non-alcoholic portal hypertension when compared to the controls, with the values of the non-alcoholic portal hypertension patients being higher, indicating a strong sympathetic activity and a significant difference (p <0.001) in HF power, with the values of the non alcoholics portal hypertension patients being lower, suggesting parasympathetic blunting. Analysis of HRV can be used as a non invasive method to evaluate the severity, early detection and type of autonomic impairment in non alcoholics portal hypertension patients
