TUESDAY, Oct. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Continuous monitoring during supine bicycle exercise echocardiography improves the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, according to two studies published in the Nov. 6 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
In the first study, Tae-Ho Park, M.D., and colleagues from the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston, examined whether imaging intermediate stages of exercise in addition to peak exercise during supine bicycle exercise echocardiography would improve the detection of coronary artery disease in 104 patients.
The researchers found that imaging intermediate stages significantly improved the sensitivity for detecting individual vessel stenoses and patients overall, though the specificity was unchanged. Changes in left ventricular end-systolic volume from intermediate stage to peak exercise predicted coronary artery disease better than changes from rest. The severity of coronary stenosis was also better diagnosed.
In the second study, Esther S.H. Kim, M.D., and colleagues from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio followed 22,275 patients (13,098 men and 9,177 women) without known heart disease who underwent symptom-limited stress testing and applied models for predicted or impaired exercise capacity and mortality.
During a median of five years, the researchers found that 646 men and 430 women died. In men, a model based on a Veterans Affairs cohort was the best predictor of mortality, while in women, a model based on the St. James Take Heart Project was the best.
"Supine bicycle echocardiography, by offering the possibility of obtaining numerous informations during exercise, appears to be more useful than the post-treadmill approach," Luc A. Pierard, M.D., Ph.D., from University Hospital Sart Tilman in Liege, Belgium, writes in an accompanying editorial.
Abstract - Park
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Abstract - Kim
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Editorial
