Diagnostic accuracy of a new shorter dobutamine infusion protocol in stress echocardiography.

Currently, a transthoracic echocardiographic examination is routinely included in the assessment of the majority of patients with cardiac disease. Other examinations are also demanded every day from the echocardiography laboratory. Of these, stress echocardiography is particularly time consuming. Shortening the time of infusion of a drug would increase the feasibility and the cost effectiveness of stress echocardiography, provided of course that the diagnostic accuracy achieved using the classic drug infusion protocol is maintained. An “accelerated” dipyridamole infusion protocol has been already used and validated in a large study. The standard protocol of dobutamine includes an initial dose of 10 μg/kg/ min with increments of 10 μg/kg/min every three minutes up to 40 μg/kg/min which is maintained over six minutes and makes this procedure particularly long. Keeping these considerations in perspective, we have tested the diagnostic accuracy of an “accelerated” dobutamine stress echocardiographic procedure in patients with suspected coronary artery disease.