Stress Test Recovery Predicts Heart Attack Death

Thursday, February 27th, 2003

According to Stress Test Recovery Predicts Heart Attack Death:

Lauer and his team found that the traditional stress test could predict some deaths. Patients with premature heartbeats during exercise were 80 percent more likely to be dead within five years than people with a normal rhythm.

But they found that the heart’s behavior during the recovery period was even more revealing.

The death rate when an irregular beat surfaced immediately after exercise was 240 percent higher than normal, with an 11 percent chance of death over the next five years compared to 5 percent for people without the rhythm abnormality.
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Three and a half years ago, Lauer and his colleagues discovered that patients whose hearts failed to slow down quickly during the first minute after exercise were four times more likely to die over the next six years that people whose hearts had a normal recovery time.

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