Enhanced diagnostic power of exercise testing for myocardial ischemia by addition of postexercise left ventricular ejection time.

To improve both the sensitivity and specificity of the multistage treadmill test, postexercise systolic time intervals were prospectively studied in 73 patients with angina-like chest pain and normal resting ST-T segments. The decision to perform coronary angiography was made independent of the exercise test. Twenty-three patients had normal coronary arteries and 50 had more than 50 percent reduction of luminal diameter of one or more major coronary arteries. The systolic time intervals were measured before and 2,4,6,8 and 10 minutes after exercise. Of all the systolic time intervals, the 4 minute postexercise left ventricular ejection time proved most discriminating between normal subjects and those with coronary artery disease. The deviations of this interval from the normal regression with heart rate both before and after exercise were used to calculate the net delta left ventricular ejection time after exercise. A net increase of more than 31 msec represented 2 standard deviations above normal. Twenty-three (46 percent) of the patients with coronary artery disease had an abnormal net delta ejection time after exercise. Twenty-five (50 percent) had a positive electrocardiographic response with a 9 percent false positive rate. Thirteen (26 percent) had only a positive postexercise net delta ejection time so that a total of 76 percent of patients with coronary artery disease were identified. Thus, measurement of the postexercise net delta ejection time a simple and useful adjunct to multistage treadmill testing.