Stress testing can also be used to obtain prognostic information to determine the patient's response to optical medical therapy, measure exercise capacity, evaluate ischemia who are already started on medical therapy for known CAD. Stress testing is most clinically useful in intermediate-risk patients for CAD that will help further reclassify these patients into low risk and high-risk depending on the stress test result. Those with high pretest probability have a high risk of false-negative results that can miss a critical diagnosis therefore, these patients should proceed directly to more confirmatory testing such as cardiac catheterization.
Patients with a low probability of disease have a high risk of false-positive results and may end up further unnecessary invasive testing without changing patient outcomes.
The utility of stress testing should be interpreted based on the likelihood of the disease. Cardiac stress testing is the most commonly used modality for diagnostic purposes in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD).
