The usefulness of cardiopulmonary exercise testing in assessment of patients with suspected coronary artery disease

Objective

The aim of this study is to assess different parameters of cardiopulmonary exercise testing that can predict the development of myocardial ischaemia in patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) and to identify the parameters which have more correlation with myocardial ischaemia.

Study design

Cross-sectional study.

Methods

In this study, a total of 31 men (mean age 57.23±11.09 years) with suggestive symptoms of CAD underwent an exercise stress test with breath-by-breath gas exchange analysis, followed by coronary angiography as the gold standard for diagnosing CAD.

Results

The ventilation versus CO₂ output (VE/VCO₂) peak was significantly different between patients with negative and positive angiography results. Receiver operator characteristic analysis showed an area under the curve of 0.73 for VE/VCO₂ peak with diagnostic threshold equal to 35 (95% CI 0.54 to 0.9; p=0.05). Exercise stress testing had sensitivity and specificity of 75% and 40%, respectively.

Conclusions

A change in ventilatory efficiency assessed using the VE/VCO₂ peak has the predictive ability to identify exercise-induced myocardial ischaemia. The present study has provided additional evidence of the potential clinical value of cardiopulmonary exercise testing in the diagnosis of CAD.

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