title: Outcomes of patients with reduced exercise capacity at time of exercise echocardiography.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To characterize the prognostic implications of exercise echocardiography in patients who have reduced exercise capacity at the time of testing.
  
  
  METHODS
  We examined the outcomes of 941 patients at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 1995, who had reduced exercise capacity on exercise echocardiography (women, <5 metabolic equivalents; men, <7 metabolic equivalents) and evaluated the potential association between clinical, electrocardiographic, and echocardiographic variables and outcomes for patients with normal vs abnormal exercise echocardiograms. We used variables of independent prognostic value to estimate cardiac risk.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For patients with normal exercise echocardiograms (n=282), the rate of cardiac death or nonfatal myocardial infarction was 09% per person-year of follow-up, and previous coronary revascularization was the only predictor of the time to cardiac event. For patients with abnormal exercise echocardiograms (n=659), the cardiac event rate was 4.4%. Independent predictors of outcome were exercise left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (risk ratio, 1.44 per 10% decrement; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-1.7; P<.001) and an increase or no change in LV end-systolic size in response to exercise (risk ratio, 2.22; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-4.1; P=.01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Exercise echocardiographic findings have important prognostic implications for patients who have reduced exercise capacity on testing. Echocardiographic descriptors of LV systolic function and dysfunction obtained immediately after exercise can be used to stratify cardiac risk of patients who do not achieve a level of exercise ordinarily considered to be of "diagnostic" value.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cardiovascular Diseases and Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn 55905, USA.
authors.forename: Robert B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: McCully
authors.forename: Veronique L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Roger
authors.forename: Steve R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Ommen
authors.forename: Douglas W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Mahoney
authors.forename: Kelli N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Burger
authors.forename: William K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Freeman
authors.forename: Patricia A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Pellikka
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D025401:Echocardiography, Stress; D017079:Exercise Tolerance; D005260:Female; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011379:Prognosis