Computer aided exercise electrocardiographic testing and coronary arteriography in patients with angina pectoris and with myocardial infarction.

A set of electrocardiographic criteria for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease was evaluated in two different groups of patients examined by computer aided 12 lead exercise electrocardiographic stress testing and coronary arteriography. One group consisted of patients with severe angina pectoris and the other of patients who had suffered a myocardial infarction three years before the study. Angiographically determined categories of patients could be identified with satisfactory precision by the electrocardiographic criteria under test in the patients with angina pectoris but not in those with infarction. A new method of classifying patients on the basis of data from coronary arteriography improved the correlation with ST segment analysis compared with conventional classification.