Electrocardiograms plays a limited role

A recent report indicates that Negative exercise electrocardiograph tests should be the first-line approach to risk stratification of hypertensive patients with chest pain.

Even though negative findings identified those at low risk, positive findings could not distinguish levels of risk. The research also indicated that pharmacological stress echocardiography yielded diagnostic and prognostic information with stronger predictive power than clinical or exercise electrocardiography. They compared the value of clinical data, exercise electrocardiography and pharmacological stress echocardiography in a sample total of hypertensive men and women aged around 60, who had chest pain. They were subjected to electrocardiography and pharmacological stress echocardiography. The result showed that, predictor of either death or hard events (death, myocardial infarction) was a positive stress echocardiography provided more predictive information on clinical evaluation. But in assessing four-year event-free echocardiography. On further analysis, stress survival, the negative predictive value of the two tests was similarly high.