Do early exercise tests provide prognostic information on long-term survival in patients after acute myocardial infarction?
Early exercise testing at 3 and 9 weeks post-myocardial infarction provides significant prognostic information regarding long-term mortality, particularly when tachycardia, major ventricular arrhythmias, or angina are provoked.
Exercise tests performed 3 and 9 weeks after acute myocardial infarction in 205 patients were found to give prognostic information on the survival during a follow-up period of 2 to 5 years. The appearance of tachycardia, major ventricular arrhythmias, or anginal complaints during these early exercise tests was thus accompanied by a significantly increased mortality during the observation period. Ventricular arrhythmias disclosed by exercise proved to be of higher prognostic significance than those recorded at rest on the same occasions. The usefulness of early exercise tests in the evaluation of the response to antiarrhythmic treatment after acute myocardial infarction as well as of the prognostic importance of the effects was documented in a smaller series of patients.
Granath et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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