[Usefulness of exercise echocardiography for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease]

The purpose was assessing the usefulness of exercise digitalized echocardiography for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease.

Eighty-eight patients, with suspected artery coronary disease, underwent both a exercise echocardiography with treadmill Bruce protocol and a coronary arteriography, within a period less than 2 months, without changes in their clinical evolution. Fifty-eight patients shown significant coronary lesions (> or = 50%).

The exercise echocardiography showed a high sensitivity (74%), significantly greater (p < 0.01) than exercise electrocardiography alone. The sensitivity was fixed by the level of exercise done, reaching 91% when submaximal exercise was achieved, and by the severity and extension of coronary disease, being of 68.5% for a single-vessel, 80% for two-vessel and 100% for three-vessel. The specificity was 87%, considering the lesions lesser than 50% as not significant, and it was 100% when the coronary arteries without disease were taken into account.

Exercise echocardiography can be a rutinary method for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease, and it shows a high sensitivity and specificity, greater than exercise electrocardiography alone.