Echocardiographic assessment of pulmonary artery systolic pressure following treadmill stress testing.

Aims: The use of treadmill stress echocardiography (SE) for the diagnosis of nascent pulmonary hypertension (PH) has been hampered by a lack of well-defined, post-exercise pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP) values across representative age groups in a normal cohort.

Methods And Results: Five hundred and eleven subjects (mean age: 53 ±14, 68% female) with normal resting PASP were included in the study. All participants performed treadmill exercise using the Bruce protocol to a high level of perceived exertion.