The role of the exercise test in the evaluation of patients for ischemic heart disease

SUMMARY A cohort of 1472 patients who underwent both exer-cise stress testing and coronary angiography within six weeks was ex-amined. The data indicated that a combination of exercise parameters is both diagnostically and prognostically important. Almost all patients (>97%) who had positive exercise tests at Stage I or Stage II had significant coronary artery disease. More than half of these (>60%) had three vessel disease and over 25 % had significant narrowing (>50%) of the left main coronary artery. Patients who achieved Stage IV or greater exercise durations with either negative or indeterminate ST-segment response had less than a 15% EXERCISE STRESS TESTING has received much atten-tion in recent years with the principal focus of interest being its predictive power. Among asymptomatic individuals, those with an abnormal ECG response during exercise have a substantially higher risk of developing manifest coronar