Discordance of exercise thallium testing with coronary arteriography in patients with atypical presentations

Eighty-one patients with diagnostically difficult clinical presentations suggesting coronary disease underwent symptom-limited maximal-exercise treadmill testing (ETT) and exercise radionuclide scanning with thallium-201. Results of these tests were in agreement in only 47 percent of the cases. Either exercise thallium or ETT was positive in 94 percent of patients with disease. Among a population with a disease prevalence of 67 percent, agreement between exercise thallium an ETT predicted disease in 92 percent of instances or excluded disease in 82 percent of instances. Frequent discordance between these two tests in 53 percent of the cases unfortunately limits this usefulness.