Stress echocardiography: introduction, history, and methods.

This symposium focuses on the basic and advanced methodology of stress echocardiography and outlines its applications and clinical impact as they relate to the evaluation of patients in a contemporary cardiology practice. This section deals with the history of the technique, the theory behind its development, and the methodology of the various stress echocardiography techniques. Subsequent sections will deal with its accuracy for identifying coronary artery disease in patients with chest pain syndromes, its utility as a prognostic tool, its use in patients with valvular disease, pulmonary hypertension, and other noncoronary syndromes, and finally, new uses such as the evaluation of myocardial viability.