Prognostic issues in stress echocardiography.

Previous investigations confirm the accuracy of stress echocardiography for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease in patients who present with chest pain syndromes, in patients undergoing coronary interventions, and in patients before noncardiac surgery. The use of stress echo to determine prognosis is less well investigated. Several recent studies have been published utilizing which use stress echocardiographic techniques to evaluate prognosis in the general population of those referred for echocardiographic stress testing. These show the ability of both exercise and pharmacologic stress echo to stratify a referral population into subsets of low, high, and intermediate risk. Further studies are needed to determine whether these initial observations are validated on longer follow-up and whether stress echocardiography will play a role in therapeutic management through assessment of outcomes.