Heart rate patterns predicting cerebral palsy in preterm infants.

We discovered new heart rate characteristics predicting CP in preterm infants. Using every-2-s HR from two 7-day periods and highly comparative time series analysis, we found a measure of low variability HR week 1 after birth and a pattern of recurrent acceleration in HR at term corrected age that predicted CP. Combined clinical and early and late HR features had AUC 0.853 for CP prediction.