Exercise Testing for Evaluation of Ventricular Function

Abstract

The most important clinical determination of ventricular function is the evaluation of the functional limits. Usually, physicians make this evaluation from their appraisal of exertional symptoms reported in a patient's history, often with considerable uncertainty about actual intensity and duration of effort or the associated circumstances that caused symptoms. Only in patients with advanced stages of heart disease, or with clinical manifestations of heart failure at rest, is the physician likely to obtain further evidence about functional limits from examination of the patient at rest. In most ambulatory cardiac patients, more appropriate functional information may be elicited from exercise testing, . . .