[Prognostication of the course of stable ischemic heart disease by exercise stress echocardiography].

We analyzed data from 549 patients (450 with high and 99 -- low pretest probability of ischemic events). Duration of observation was 12-42 (mean 20.1+/-11.6) months. End points were death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and revascularization. Cox proportional hazards model was used for assessment of relationship between clinical-instrumental data and events. One year risk of cardiac death and nonfatal myocardial infarction was 3 and 15%, event free survival -- 95 and 66% for patients with negative and positive result of stress echocardiography, respectively. Besides local contractility disturbances total test duration less than 6 min was significantly related to prognosis of main events while left ventricular hypertrophy, amount of METs, development of angina during stress test, and hypertensive disease were predictors of combined end point (death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or revascularization). Thus results of exercise stress echocardiography had high prognostic power in patients with ischemic heart disease.