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The responses to supramaximal exercise testing have been traditionally analyzed by means of standard parametric and nonparametric statistics. Unfortunately, these statistical approaches do not allow insight into the pattern of variation of a given parameter over time. The purpose of this study was to determine if the application of dynamic factor analysis (DFA) allowed discriminating different ...

OBJECTIVES The purposes of this database study were to determine: 1) the relationship between mental stress-induced ischemia and ischemia during daily life and during exercise; 2) whether patients who exhibited daily life ischemia experienced greater hemodynamic and catecholamine responses to mental or physical stress than patients who did not exhibit daily life ischemia, and 3) whether patient...

BACKGROUND Ischemia during laboratory mental stress tests has been linked to significantly higher rates of adverse cardiac events. Previous studies have not been designed to detect differences in mortality rates. METHODS AND RESULTS To determine whether mental stress-induced ischemia predicts death, we evaluated 196 patients from the Psychophysiological Investigations of Myocardial Ischemia (...

Exercise stress testing is a non-invasive, safe and affordable screening test for coronary artery disease (CAD), provided there is careful patient selection for better predictive value. Patients at moderate risk for CAD are best served with this kind of screening, with the exception of females during their reproductive period, when a high incidence of false positive results has been reported. P...

BACKGROUND Although pharmacologic stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) and exercise stress MPI have comparable diagnostic accuracy, their comparative value for risk stratification of patients with known or suspected coronary disease is not known. METHODS AND RESULTS The data of 14,918 patients were combined from 24 studies evaluating prognosis in patients undergoing either pharmacologic ...

OBJECTIVES 1) To identify whether patients with panic disorder in general and those with the respiratory subtype in particular actively avoid exercise; 2) to investigate physiological differences in cardiopulmonary function parameters in patients with panic disorder in general, patients with the respiratory subtype of panic disorder, and healthy controls upon exercise challenge. METHODS Patie...

BACKGROUND Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is associated with a decreased risk of all-cause mortality but is rarely assessed in medical settings due to burdens of time, cost, risk, and resources. The purpose of this study was to test the construct validity of a regression equation developed by Jurca and colleagues (2005) to estimate CRF without exercise testing in community dwelling older adult...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Accurate and early identification of high-risk surgical patients allows for targeted use of perioperative monitoring and interventions that may improve their outcomes. This review summarizes current evidence on how information from the preoperative, operative, and immediate postoperative periods can help identify such individuals. RECENT FINDINGS Simple risk indices, such as...

OBJECTIVE To confirm that electrical myostimulation is a good alternative to conventional aerobic training in patients with chronic heart failure and to compare the effects of both training programmes in patients with different exercise capacities. PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 44 patients with stable chronic heart failure underwent 5 weeks of exercise training, with electrical myostimulati...