[The first-choice technic for assessing myocardial viability. Stress echocardiography].

Myocardial viability can be studied by different techniques. Although PET is considered to be the technique of choice, both isotopes and stress echocardiography have demonstrated their usefulness in clinical practice. While the former has high sensitivity, the latter has better specificity. The differences in results between these two techniques may be due to the fact that they each evaluate different aspects: isotopes detect the presence of viable cells, whereas echocardiography assesses the contractility reserve of hibernating myocardium. If by viability we mean improvement in contractility, stress echocardiography should be considered the technique of choice. Although this technique is considered to be partially limited by image quality and inter-observer variability, recent technological advances should overcome these problems. Availability, cost and access to information are also important advantages of stress echocardiography.