title: [Role of pharmacologic or exercise stress echocardiography for the assessment of hemodynamics in valvular heart disease].
abstract: Stress echocardiography is emerging as an important component of stress testing in patients with valvular heart disease. Its role is not established in the routine assessment of patients, but its use is appealing for the possibility of objectively evaluating symptoms, hemodynamic changes, left ventricular function. Stress echocardiography has the advantages of being widely available, low cost and versatile for the assessment of disease severity. Nevertheless, there is a lack of convincing evidence that stress echocardiography may lead to clinical decisions and better outcomes. Therefore, large-scale prospective randomized studies focusing on patient outcomes are needed in the future.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica del CNR, Pisa, Italy. rosas@ifc.cnr.it
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sicari
authors.forename: Sabrina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: La Falce
mesh_terms: D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D025401:Echocardiography, Stress / Q000379:methods*; D005080:Exercise Test; D006349:Heart Valve Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests