[Appropriateness of prescription of exercise stress test, echocardiography, Holter monitoring and vascular echography].

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the appropriateness of prescription of non-invasive cardiological tests (exercise stress test, echocardiography, Holter monitoring and vascular echography), consecutively performed in our outpatient laboratory during 4 weeks.

Methods: We collected the following data: the appropriateness of prescription (according to the Italian Federation of Cardiology guidelines); test indications; the prescribing physician (cardiologist/non-cardiologist); type of prescription (elective/urgent); clinical utility (useful/useless) and result (normal/abnormal) of each test.

Results: We evaluated 960 prescriptions (320 exercise tests; 282 echocardiograms; 158 Holter tests; 200 vascular echographies).