Talk:Cardiac stress test

I am unsure of the accuracy of this. It contradicts the opinion of several university researchers I spoke with about the stress test.

confusing, long Paragraphs

There are two real ways to confuse a user. One is to write a bunch of poorly connected or conveyed information. The other is to write in big, long, difficult to process junk.

This article has a few very big paragraphs. Short, one-sentence paragraphs appear childish; but very, very long paragraphs are difficult to break down. Paragraphs should be most ideally 3-6 sentences, each with a few clauses. Such a paragraph would be about the size of this one, perhaps a little shorter or a little longer; discretion with semi-colons is also important, as a single paragraph may be very long.

There are a few very, very large paragraphs in this article that need to be broken up and rewritten. This will aid in clarity. Check out Further Research especially; the contributors seem to have tried to address individual bullet points in single paragraphs, without brievarity. Try making better use of subsections.

You are always welcome to suggest revisions yourself, this being the user-edited encyclopedia and all, rather than just pointing these things out.

inaccurate specificity figure given for nuclear stress test

[I removed a very long, poorly-formatted copy-and-paste from this page posted by User:128.249.29.35 on 15:46, 30 May 2006, under this heading here. While the information was probably helpful, I assume it was a copyright violation; at any rate, it was near impossibe to read. Dyfsunctional 21:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)]

Discussion of other screening techniques

I think there is too much of this article devoted to other screening techniques. Simply mentioning them as alternatives in a separate paragraphs and putting links may be more helpful to the reader, as there is a great quantity of information in the article already.

Also glaringly obvious: a lack of any description of protocols, expected findings, exercise tolerance measurements, and implications of any findings.

I will check references on Duke nomograms and their applicability to prognosis in populations. Duke nomograms quantify annual risk of CV mortality as contrasted with Framingham 10 year cumulative risk scores.

The reference to a person dropping dead after good performance on stress treadmill (Further Research: "However, there was also long-standing experience that some people could exercise all the way to maximum predicted heart rate, have no abnormal symptoms and completely normal stress test results, only to die of a massive heart attack within a few days to weeks." ) is anecdotal and not helpful in objective quantitation of risk or behavior modification.

Sw2727 14:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd love to see details of Bruce protocol treadmill (stages etc), treadmill score (Duke score) and nomograms. And stationary bicycle testing should be mentioned, since there are big practical problems administering treadmill tests to many people (both those in very poor condition, and those in very good condition).

But I think a reference to dropping dead is very apt. This article does not exist to serve any particular purpose (such as "behavior modification") -- it exists to serve all purposes, to generally inform. Nothing makes the point that treadmill tests are not definitive better than such a vivid, memorable statement that a test may show no problems, but imminent death is still possible.-69.87.204.9 13:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Dropping dead -- further discussion

Let me submit then that dropping dead is possible (nonzero risk) after any cardiac diagnostic procedure by any measure by any statistical model. Still does not serve any point of informing anyone about exercise stress testing. Perhaps the wording is the problem -- perhaps "The risk of cardiac events leading to death and morbidity is never zero, nor is it implied by a relatively outcome on stress treadmill testing". When a layperson reads an article that says they can still "drop dead" after a procedure that is designed to assess risk, they may assume that it is inferior to ones that don't explicitly use this language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sw2727 (talk • contribs) 19:32, 5 September 2007 (UTC)