Systems and methods provide for detecting respiration disturbances and changes in respiration disturbances, preferably by detecting variability in one or more respiration parameters. Respiration rate variability is determined for a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, including disease/disorder detection, diagnosis, treatment, and therapy titration. Systems and methods provide for generating a footprint, such as a two- or three-dimensional histogram, representative of a patients respiration parameter variability, and generating one or more indices representative of quantitative measurements of the footprint.
