Stress echocardiography is a good test for detecting ischemic heart disease. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy should be verified. This test was compared to standard coronary angiographic results. This is the first study by Bangkok Heart Hospital’s echocardiography lab to verify the effectiveness of stress echocardiography.
This study was a retrospective study that reviewed data from records. The 149 selected cases underwent stress echocardiography and a coronary angiogram (within 2 months after the stress echocardiography) between 1st January and 31st December 2012. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were assessed.
The overall sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were 81.98%, 42.10%, and 71.81% respectively. There was a variation of sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in each day of the week. There were many factors such as number of cases, reporting physicians, technically poor studies (including poor echogenicity of subject), technician experience, abnormal wall motion at rest, atrial fibrillation and bundle branch block. The sensitivity ranged from 57.14% to 92.3%. The specificity ranged from 16.67% to 70%. The accuracy ranged from 50.0 % to 86.67 %.
Stress echocardiography is a good test for evaluating ischemic heart disease. Our echo lab had lower sensitivity, specificity and accuracy than other previous studies. The limitation of this study was that it was a retrospective study. But it showed our routine work. We hope this will help our echo lab to improve the quality of its stress echocardiography testing.
accuracy, stress echocardiography, sensitivity, specificity, ischemic heart disease
10.31524/bkkmedj.2013.09.003