COMPARISON OF EXERCISE-ECG AND HOLTER MONITORING FOR THE DETECTION OF MYOCARDIAL-ISCHEMIA IN PATIENTS WITH CORONARY-ARTERY DISEASE

Holter-monitoring and exercise-ECG can be employed for the detection of myocardial ischemia. Exercise-ECG is capable of detecting ischemias caused by physical activity. In contrast, Hotter monitoring can detect episodes of myocardial ischemia independent of exertion, but possibly connected with other factors such as mental stress. In 60 patients (49 male, 11 female, mean age 55.1 years) with angiographically documented coronary artery disease (26x 1-vessel, 21x 2-vessel, 13x 3-vessel diseases) exercise-ECG and ambulatory 24-h monitoring were performed (3-channel recordings, ST-segment analysis). The assessment of the exercise-ECG showed 31 out of 60 patients with pathological results. 34 patients had pathological ST-segment changes during Holter monitoring (56 %). Since both methods detected different patients, a combination of these techniques is useful. The combination of Hotter monitoring and exercise-ECG raised the sensitivity to 78 % (47/60 patients). Different heart rates were found at the point of maximal ST-segment changes in exercise-ECG as compared to the episodes of ST-segment changes recorded by Holter monitoring. This finding clearly illustrates the fact that different pathophysiological mechanisms are causing myocardial ischemia in respective cases. Using the coronary arteriogram as standard, the sensitivity of the two methods was different. While both techniques could detect multi-vessel disease at a similar level, Hotter monitoring was significantly more sensitive in detecting patients with single-vessel disease. Thus, exercise-ECG and Holter monitoring supplement each other in detecting myocardial ischemia. In the future, larger clinical trials will have to confirm these results.