Who Should Get A Stress Test?

— Andrew Perry, MD, asks an expert

MedicalToday

Andrew Perry, MD, a resident physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, produces a podcast on cardiology issues. Here, he and a colleague discussed cardiac stress testing -- who should get it, who should not, and why or why not. His previous podcast on addressed PCSK9 inhibitors.

In this episode, I visit with Mike Rich, MD, a cardiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, to talk about the use of stress testing, particularly diagnostic stress testing in patients with suspected coronary artery disease. Our discussion focuses primarily upon how to select patients to send for stress testing and the types of stress testing that are available. We close by discussing two cases to illustrate the principles covered, and how stress testing can be used in the setting of known coronary disease.

Today I'm going to be visiting with Dr. Mike Rich, a cardiologist at Washington University in St. Louis to talk about the use of stress testing, particularly diagnostic stress testing in patients with suspected coronary artery disease. This is a common question that comes up in the clinic and also on the wards.

We'll focus our discussion primarily upon who should be getting stress testing, talking about our pre-test probability, a brief discussion about Bayes' theorem, a brief overview on what types of stress testing modalities are available, and then we'll wrap it up with a couple of cases to highlight some of the principles that we'll have discussed.

For a full transcript, click here.

, a resident physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis.