[Evaluation of the appropriateness of prescribing non-invasive cardiologic tests].

Background: We evaluated the appropriateness of the prescription of echocardiography, exercise testing, Holter monitoring and vascular sonography for ambulatory patients, performed during 4 weeks in 21 outpatient laboratories in Tuscany and Umbria, Italy.

Methods: We collected the following data: the appropriateness of the prescription (according to the guidelines of the Italian Federation of Cardiology), the prescribing physician (cardiologist vs noncardiologist), the synthetic result (normal vs abnormal) and the clinical utility (useful vs useless) of each exam.

Results: We evaluated 5614 prescriptions (patients: 3027 males, 2587 females; mean age 63 years, range 14-96 years).