AIMS Accurate and cost-effective techniques are required for investigating patients experiencing chest pain, given the significant workload this patient cohort represents. We determined the cost impact of stress echocardiography compared with myocardial perfusion scintigraphy and coronary angiography in the investigation of patients with chest pain deemed unsuitable for exercise treadmill testi...

Non-invasive techniques have become the workhorse of cardiologists for the diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with suspected coronary heart disease. To date, pharmacological stress echocardiography represents an alternative, exercise-independent stress modality and has become an established method for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. In a recent review article, Geleijnse and...

Stress echocardiography is an established technique for the assessment of extent and severity of coronary artery disease. The combination of echocardiography with a physical, pharmacological or electrical stress allows to detect myocardial ischemia with an excellent accuracy. A transient worsening of regional function during stress is the hallmark of inducible ischemia. Stress echocardiography ...

The ninth edition of the congress of the European Association of Echocardiography (EAE) (former working group of Echocardiography) held in Florence has just finished with a great success of participant attendance (2.842) and abstract submissions. Hot topics at EuroEcho 9 were: 1--live 3-dimensional echocardiography and surgical decision making; in pediatric cardiology; in resynchronization ther...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether inotropic stress myocardial perfusion imaging, echocardiography, or a combination of the two could enhance the detection of multivessel disease, over and above clinical and exercise electrocardiographic data. DESIGN 100 consecutive patients investigated by exercise electrocardiography and diagnostic coronary arteriography underwent simultaneous inotropic stress Tc-...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to assess the long-term value of pharmacologic stress echocardiography with either dipyridamole or dobutamine (DET) for prediction of cardiac death in patients with proven or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). BACKGROUND Stress echocardiography is an established, cost-effective technique for the detection of CAD. METHODS From the Echo Persantin...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether, compared with fundamental imaging, second harmonic imaging can improve the accuracy of dobutamine stress echocardiography for identifying viable myocardium, using nuclear imaging as a reference. PATIENTS 30 patients with chronic left ventricular dysfunction (mean (SD) age, 60 (8) years; 22 men). METHODS Dobutamine stress echocardiography was carried out in al...

Real-time three-dimensional (RT-3D) echocardiography has entered the clinical practice but true incremental value over standard two-dimensional echocardiography (2D) remains uncertain when applied to stress echo. The aim of the present study is to establish the additional value of RT-3D stress echo over standard 2D stress echocardiography. We evaluated 23 consecutive patients (age = 65 +/- 10 y...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death after kidney transplant. Screening for coronary artery disease is integral to pretransplant evaluation, although the relative performance of different tests is uncertain. STUDY DESIGN Systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy studies using hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic analysis. SETTING & POPULATION...